20-B Deck Blue / Weathered Deck Blue

Polly Scale made that shade in their line and Testors Model Master is supposed to be coming out with that shade in the near future.

White Ensign Models sells it in their Colourcoat line. If the thought of ordering from England deters you, but you are interested in WW2 USN, I'd suggest you pick up a range of colors to amortize the shipping. It's really well formulated, accurate paint. I use it pretty exclusively for ships.

I've recently become a fan of Lifecolor acrylics, from Italy.  "Deck Blue" and "Flight Deck Blue Stain" are among the colors in the Lifecolor "U.S. Navy" sets.  Those sets are available through Freetime Hobbies.  Unfortunately I don't know of a convenient source for the individual jars.

A tip regarding this particular color:  I recall seeing at least one paint bottle (I don't remember the manufacturer) labeled "Weather Deck Blue."  I think it was supposed to read "Weathered Deck Blue."  (A weather deck, in sailor-speak, is one that isn't covered by another deck, and therefore is exposed to the weather.  I suspect the person responsible for that paint level didn't know what "weathered" means.)

Another tip:  any stain or paint applied to a carrier flight deck gets  really weathered - in a hurry.

I second GMorrison on WEM Colourcoats paint.  It is really great stuff.  Colors are wonderful to look at, and it applies very well.

For all the information you need on US Navy carrier painting, look here (if you don't already know about it!):

http://www.shipcamouflage.com/usn_cv.htm

Awesome, Awesome, Awesome.

Thanks for the recommendations and the links!

G-J

p.s.:  After browsing through the ship forum posts, I may have the itch to try one.

Careful, 'tis a dark path!

As has been mentioned, there isn't a "weathered Deck Blue" in USN colors. There were a couple of different flight deck stains during the war, as the Navy bounced around different camouflage theories. For a 1943-ish F6F-3, you want to look at " #21 Flight Deck Stain." This was revised in mid-1944 and kept the same designation, mostly, to " #21 Flight Deck Stain (revised)." The early color was designed to match the Navy's 5-O Ocean Gray when fresh, which was somewhat similar to the non-specular blue-gray used on the two-color aircraft camouflage. The revised was similar to the Deck Blue (designed to match, but paint and stain on wood will always look different next to each other). Both were weathered to **** and gone quickly, due to gas, oil, rubber tires and shoe soles, etc.

I like the WEM paints as well, but Testors now has deck blue in their line, just not widely stocked. If you don't want to get the actual stain for your time period (and are doing a later time period) that would probably make a good base color before weathering.

I think the confusion arises from the fact that one (or more) of the paint companies began using the term Weather Deck Blue as a misnomer for 20-B Deck Blue. In fact, there never was a USN paint called "Weather Deck Blue." 20-B Deck Blue was, in fact, used on weather decks, but was always known as 20-B Deck Blue.