hull grey

USS Emmons, DMS version before she was sunk here. My dive instructor has dove her multiple times and I intend to as well... I'm falling in love with her already and I havent even seen her but in pics. The mine sweep gear will be dificult to scratch build, and I need to have decals made.

"Hull grey" is way too much of an over generalization.  (I was going to say "a bit of an over-generalization", but that doesn't come close)

In WWII, the US Navy used a number of different camouflage color sets (measures) and designs.  You can see a great database for this at http://www.shipcamouflage.com/usn_dd.htm

Go to the Benson class and find DD-457 Emmons and you will find Measure 22 as her last listed pattern.  Then go to http://www.shipcamouflage.com/measure_22.htm and find that Ms 22 consisted of light grey upperworks, called Haze Grey 5-H (different from modern Haze Grey) and a medium-darkish grey called Navy Blue 5-N on the hull, up to the highest horizontal line on the hull.  Note that this Navy Blue is grey, not blue.  Call it blue-ish if you MUST.

You can get the exact color matches from White Ensign in the mail, since you get so much of your other stock in the mail, or you can pick two colors that are a similar distance  from each other to make the combination resemble 5-H and 5-N.  Opinions abound.  Your target is Measure 22.

Good luck,
Rick

mr. hobby H54 NavyBlue, is a grey blue color.

I also have H 42 "Blue Grey" and H75 Dark Seagray... I'll work something out.

Surface_Line wrote:

Note that this Navy Blue is grey, not blue.  Call it blue-ish if you MUST.

Are you sure you're not running a fever? 5-N Navy blue is WAAY more blue than gray; when it weathered it would chalk and some of the blue would fade towards neutral tone, but calling it gray is just not correct. Check out pallet two here if you want 3rd party verification, or better yet, buy one of the Snyder & Short color chips on the aforementioned ShipCamouflage.Com website.

Now, there may be some confusion as the US  Navy changed paint formulas around in early 1945. 5-N Navy Blue was redesignated 5-NB and 5-N change to Navy Gray, a new color that was a neutral gray, no blue tones present such as in the earlier 5-O Ocean Gray. Complicating things, the Navy allowed the use of 5-N until stocks were exhausted, so we can't really say with 100% certainty that every ship past a certain date was one or the other. 

However, we can make educated guesses; mine is that she was using the Navy Blue and not Navy Grey as sheheaded west before the neutral Navy Gray was available.

As has been mentioned before, White Ensign paints are exactly matched to the fresh colors, you can get them from a couple of different sources online, including Shipcamouflage. FS colors are not a match as the FS system post-dates the system used during the war.

Tracy (ShipCamouflage Webmaster amongst other things)

What is this hull color?  USS Texas

waste gate wrote:

What is this hull color?  USS Texas

She's in Measure 21, which means 5-N Navy Blue, but the paint has weathered and discolored a bit from the initial application. The area around the hull number, being in more of an overhang, is closer to the original color.

I do so love these debates on the exact color ... not unlike the unending "Are we there yet?" questions from the back seat on a long car trip

It really boils down to this - it's your model, and if it looks right to you, then who the heck is going to say otherwise? And if they do, what the heck do you care? The joy is in the journey. Don't clutter it up with too many details.

*goes back to obsessing on how the heck to build 1/700 rolling stock for his ever-expanding dockyard diaorama*