The Ship Model Forum

I have a large number of ships for the USN WWII to paint and hope to find a good haze gray ...Tamiya is the main paint brand i use but open to others, the problem with some of the custom paint sets such as the ones for the various WWII naveis, is they offer only small plastic bottles and it does not go far.

the Tamiya Haze gray i see listed is too dark and too blue. I may have to try just a pale gray of any make.

spray versions are also welcome but mostly i paint by hand.

I have tried many Haze grays offered but most are either too blue or too dark or off in tone. suggestions very welcome thanks in advance.

i am also faced with solving deck colors for the USN ships it appears from my research that many decks were painted a dark tone gray of some sort though some of the larger ships, CA and BB had wood decks at least at the start of the war. Various non slip surfaces were tried, some navies used Linoleum but it burns well so was later on not a poplar choice.

hard to find good quality color photos exp from high up angles looking down.

I found the USN Painting and Cementing Guide of 1943 online here:

https://www.shipcamouflage.com/painting ... ng_toc.htm

and the USN comoflage painting guide for various ship types: 1945

https://www.shipcamouflage.com/ships2_9 ... ntents.htm

I have an original WWII set of USN 1200 scale ship models in a boxed set that may or may not be painted in an actual USN gray color.



USS New Mexico BB off Guam July 1944

this is one of the most usefuli color photos from WWII of USN ships that shows how light and neutral (ie NOT tinted green or blue) the standard USN Gray was.

I am still going to asses a number of various Taimaya colors but their Haze gray is way off.

this photo also shows the deck covered in some kind of either wood desking stained dark or some other coating. this helps a lot for that too.



This is a good color photo from a newsreel of a USN cruiser in the Pacific showing the deck color, wood i am guessing.

and another photo from 1945 off Pelliu on a US Battleship unidentified showing the dark deck covering of some sort.




Chris

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Tamiya doesn't sell a WW2 USN Haze Grey (5-H), so there's no expectation that the paint they call "Haze Gray" would match it. If anything, it's closer for modern Haze Gray.

This said, never use photos for exact colour appearances. Different films portray colours differently, and you don't know what film was used or what postprocessing, either analog or digital, was done between the camera shutter activating in the 1940s and the image appearing on your computer screen.

It is known that 5-H Haze Gray between 1942 and early 1945 did use a purple-blue pigment. The formula for it confirms this. Only in 1945 was there a call for replacing the purple-blue with a neutral formula, but the change wasn't instant as the old formula was to be consumed before using the new.

For decks, it's 20B Weather Deck Blue, which was a dark grey-blue. Used on both steel and wood decks other than carrier flight decks.

These colours are called out in the various Measures in the ShipCamouflage links you found.


As for an accurate 5-H Haze Grey, Colorcoats/Sovereign Hobbies makes the most accurate one, but it's enamel only. Various acrylic manufacturers have ones that are claimed to be accurate and are sold as 5-H (and the various other USN colours), but may differ in precision. I use Lifecolor's series of paints, but that's just because they're easy to brush paint and are water-based - the exact match to the original colour isn't as important as long as it's consistent and provides adequate contrast.

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Hi Timothy and thanks for the fast reply. Yes i know very well about color photos, i am a professional artist and now a professional creator of museum displays in digital format and spend a lot of time analyizing and determing colors of things. thanks a lot for your thoughts on Haze 5H gray. The ships from the earlier 1940s were somewhat bluer in the gray i think, from what i can determine. I have all of the Lifecolor sets and will test them as well. i may look at Colorcoat's gray even tho it is enamel just to see and I may end up mixing my own color, been doing that most of my adult life in one form or another. but thanks again for your reply.

that deck blue i have seen for sure in many of the smaller ships DD etc. but the bigger ones appear to have other color coatings at times. will keep working on it but thought to post here to see what folks think.

Soverign Hobbies did a lot of research into this which they have online here:

https://www.sovereignhobbies.co.uk/page ... our-scheme

and here is a sample of their 5H Haze 1941 Gray



it looks dark to me but i will check it out and test it

an interesting foot note is that in the Pacific War area many ships including some of the biggest were painted a darker blue shade...as seen in one of the famous photos of the carriers..



sorry for poor quality of the image but it is such a useful and good one is worth sharing

thanks again
Chris

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3D Worlds and Game Developers Group LInkedin
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That digital colour sample looks different depending on whether I'm viewing it on my laptop, my TV/external monitor, or phone. It's really not something to be used as a standard.

Worth noting that in the MS 31/32/33 series, the deck was also a pattern of 20B with 5-O Ocean Grey, so sometimes you see that. But otherwise, any variation in the appearance of the paint is more due to weathering and stains (rust!) than a different actual paint.

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Timothy thanks again for your sharing and comments. that sample is one they posted so thought might be helpful to just share it here i have ordered some of their paint just to test it.

yes i am sure decks got a lot of wear and tear. Overall i hope to achieve some realism in what i create model wise, so they wont be just "fresh out of the paint shop..but probably wont try at first for any camoflage schemes. just hope to get versant with the the basic stuff. but thanks so much for comments is a complex subject not only for the USN but also for the RN from the UK, the Kriegsmairine, the La Royale of France, and the Regia Marina. thankfully all have archives, and good historical institutions, builders models preserved, and much other info ...

Step by step.

There are some good color photos preserved from LIFE magazine but their archive is harder to access than it used to be but will keep working on this.

Chris

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Director
3D Worlds and Game Developers Group LInkedin
'"We Build Worlds"
Admin
Elvas Tower