Haze Grey ?

The correct paint is FS 26270.  Of course you may not be able to find it in semi-gloss so go for FS 36270.

I favor Model Master's line where it is called Neutral gray.  I'm sure others may prefer a different brand, but that's the correct gray for current US Navy ships.

And don't forget, the shades of gray will vary in patches due to different areas of the ship being painted at different times by the crew.

Model Master Recently issued Haze Gray in both their Acrylic and Enamel lines.

stikpusher

Model Master Recently issued Haze Gray in both their Acrylic and Enamel lines.

The new ModelMaster Haze Gray is WWII era 5-H Haze Gray.   This paint has a purple/lue tint.   Modern USN Haze Gray does not equal 5H.    Modern Haze Gray 26270 is neutral gray,  no purple/blue tint.

I am pretty sure that MM released both a WWII 5H and a modern Haze Gray. At least in the Enamel paint line.

MM release a Natural Grey USN, but when it is dry it is more like deck grey.

They have a Neutral Haze Gray and 5H Haze Gray listed. With the Neutral Haze Gray reputedly being the modern shade. I have not bought or used these colors yet, so I can not comment on regarding the appearance. Just what they have listed.

WEM is missed.

Hah! Gray is not a color!  

I hope it's OK to ask this question in this thread. It's just a bit off subject.

I'm currently starting to build a Liberty ship (Trumpeter 1/350 S.S. John W Brown as the S.S. Stephen Hopkins) and I've had no success finding out exactly what color(s) to paint it. I believe the most informative thread I've found will give me considerable leeway in my color choice(s) but I thought I'd ask on this forum in 2015 to see if there's anything new that can be added to the information I found in this 2005 thread from FineScale:

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/7/p/33023/342444.aspx

I called some folks at the S.S. Lane Victory in San Pedro and it didn't seem like anyone was sure of what the paint colors were on the S.S. Stephen Hopkins - I really couldn't expect them to know anyway. They did say that the Lane Victory was painted in Haze Gray but I am not sure if they meant now or back in WWII.

At any rate I've decided to use LifeColor Haze Gray for the entire ship with some Ocean Gray mixed in for the weather deck just to make it look a bit darker due to grime and weathering.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Mike

I like the sound of the Measure 14 mentioned in the thread you referenced. Overall Haze Gray I do believe is more of a post WWII scheme.

Because the Liberty ships were not naval vessels but sailed for the Maritime Commission, they were painted in civilian shipyards; civilian colors. I think a good match is Ocean Gray.

The deck and the verticals were painted the same color AFAICT.

The thread you linked is right, but it's a little confusing. He goes on a bit about Measure 14, but its clear that Maritime Commission ships were NOT painted thus. They were held by their ankles and dipped in Gray. Ocean Gray is a good match.

Yes asking the volunteers doesn't get you anywhere. At the JOB the Navy periodically donates paint, what they get is what they use.

GMorrison,

That's what I've decided to do except  I'll be undercoating the weather deck in Deck Blue (20 B) just to give it a little darker look - as if it had some "grunge" from all the equipment (tanks/vehicles, etc.) that were carried on that deck. I don't want to dirty it up too much since this was the S.S. Stephen Hopkins' maiden voyage from which she never returned.

At any rate I hope my friend George Cronk, Jr. will like the model.

Mike

http://www.usmm.org/hopkins.html

IMO, and this is just speculation, I would think the shipyards probably used what grey was available and Navy stores were probably what was available. I've looked at the black & white photos of hundreds of Liberty ships and some look lighter, some look darker. Decks are almost always the same color as the hulls and superstructures. It's true that the decks are going to be dirty, even on a maiden voyage. But it will be dirt in spots and splotches, mostly soot.

Fred

No tanks on the hatchcovers, please.

OP- sorry for the 'jack. I haven't modeled any modern ships in a while so can't help you there.

Hi :

I usually mix my own . I have found that FS color standards don't well on model ships . Why ? well , given the ship type they are too dark or too light !

There are lots of things to consider when painting a WW II to modern USN warship.

FS 26270 is a camouflage paint.  It is selected because it's reflection of light can vary so much depending on lighting conditions.  It looks lighter on sunny days and darker on overcast days.  Some of this is by design.  Anyone who has spent as many days as I used to do dealing with photos of USN ships and trying to match color balance of the grays of a CVN in the Pacific with one in the Atlantic can attest to this.  The hull will reflect the different colors of the sea and pick up that tint.  The semi-gloss finish attributes to this as well.  

When working with photographs that are intended for printing in a publication, color matching comes into play. It is always a good idea if dealing with more than one photo appearing on a page of objects with a known color factor, to match the colors up.  Good ol' FS 26270 can do some amazing things to the colors that reflect from the hull.  A USN ship photo can have a distinct magenta cast in the shadows, or a cyan one.  So it can be hard when looking at photos to determine the correct reflectance and color cast.

This can be much worse trying to judge WW II camo brightness in black and white.  Of course the paint faded, etc., but in those days and the films they used required colored filters for the lenses to try to knock the UV haze that is always around ships at sea.  These filters and sometimes the films themselves rendered the contrast of the gray tones much different than they actually were.  So, a photo of a WW II ship in 5-H Haze Gray and a photo of a ship in 5-O Ocean Gray might match up pretty close in two photos.  However those same two ships when viewed by the human eye pier side would have a very different reflectance.  The Ocean Gray ship would be the darker of the two.

I believe it is a good idea to stick with the known camo colors when painting a model.  Of course adding some white for "scale effect" can be a good idea.

Trying to judge the proper reflectance and color balance for a model from color photos on the web viewed on a non-color calibrated monitor by a mark one eyeball could be frustrating experience.

If anyone is interested in looking into this in more depth, let me know.  I'd be happy to try an answer any questions they might have.

It can drive you nuts, try to keep it fun.

GMorrison wrote: "No tanks on the hatch covers, please."

Well, I ordered a 1/350 set of several items from several suppliers, among them a set from Hobbylinc Japan "1/350 US Tank Set A (M4 Sherman/MA" that I will have to wait a while for since they're on back order. Don't worry, I didn't think the canvas hatch covers, even with frames of wood or steel, would hold a tank .

Maybe I can put the jeeps and/or Studebaker trucks I ordered on the hatch covers?

Mike

For what it is worth, I took my father-in-law to visit the Lane Victory last year. He served as a U.S. Navy Armed Guard on those ships during WW2 and I was building a display, for him so I asked him if the color scheme looked close to what he remembered. He told me that the Liberty ships he served on "seemed" to be about the same color as the grey that was used on warships, but he recognized that memory is tricky. Unfortunately all his old photos are black and white. I went ahead and painted his model the Navy 5H haze grey of that period, and he seemed to think it was close enough when I gave it to him for Father's Day. What he remembers most about camouflage was that when they worked their way over into the South Pacific, he was surprised to see the war ships that were painted dark blue. The  main innacurracy he saw with my model was that the gun arrangement was not the same on all the ships in the class, and his dual 20mm mount was not on the Trumpeter kit.

onyxman

IMO, and this is just speculation, I would think the shipyards probably used what grey was available and Navy stores were probably what was available.

Nope. the Navy did not issue paint that they had to pay for to civilian shipyards. They did not even give out the formulas until 1943, so liberties wouldn't have had access to civilian-mixed equivalents until the middle of 1943.

Thanks for that clarification Tracy. I din't think the Maritime Commission actually got paint from Navy stores free of charge. I just thought maybe the manufacturers wouldn't go to the trouble of mixing different colors for the Navy and other customers. But maybe they did.

Mike, jeeps and trucks can go on the hatch covers. You might want to show them with some timber dunnage under them to distribute the weight, especially for the trucks. GM was referring to certain examples we've seen with Sherman tanks sitting on those wood and canvas hatches, and even hanging from the 2.5 ton cargo booms!

The main point was that the Navy wasn't sharing the formula initially , so they had to mix something different. This may be a bit to paint geeky for the thread, but the Navy documents I have indicate that the Navy didn't want to release the formula both to keep it a war secret from the enemy as well as to avoid a run on the chemicals they were using to manufacture the paint. The Bureau of Ordnance, however, let the formula for Ocean Gray slip out to some contractors for equipment (Ocean Gray was the color a lot of equipment was to be delivered in) and some others got wind and started complaining to the Navy that the should get the formulas as well. At that point the Navy decided the genie was out of the bottle and the might as well release the formulas to approved commercial entities to avoid having to deal with the complaints as well as to enable commercial shipyards building Navy vessels to more easily obtain the required paints. This was in March of 1943, but I'm not sure how quickly news and formulas spread.

I have a copy of a memo from February of 1942 that I had forgotten about that says, "The Navy Department and field offices of the Navy have frequently been asked to advise as to the best type of painted camouflage to apply to vessels which are not under Naval jurisdiction. It is recommended that such vessels, including Army transports, be painted in accordance with the painting schemes of the Maritime Commission, using Slate Gray on the vertical surfaces, Deck Gray on the horizontal surfaces, and using paints which conform to Enclosure (A)."

Enclosure (A) was SHIPS-2. Slate Gray had been a color the Navy used in WWI and later (also known as "war Color" and it's use actually dates back to 1902 or so) but I'm not sure if the slate referred to here was the same or if the Maritime commission had a different formula. SHIPS-2 of the time didn't really discuss deck gray, but it was a pre-war standard paint that was mentioned in the Painting and Cementing Guide of 1943 and in 1945 camouflage, so it would have been fairly easy for civilian shipyards to obtain or have a formula for.

Great information for if I ever do add one of the Trumpeter Liberty Ships to my collection.

I was at my LHS today on a paint run and I specifically checked the new Model Master rack display. In enamels, they do indeed have a modern Haze Gray, which they label "Natural Haze Gray", as well as WWII era Haze Gray 5H. As well as 5L, 5P, 5O, 5N, and 20B. So in enamels, those colors are out there for us. I can't vouch for accuracy of the colors, but it is nice to see them available.

We had a very interesting discussion of the whole question of color for scale model warships a few years ago in this thread: cs.finescale.com/.../987616.aspx .

My own opinions, for what little they're worth, haven't changed since then. I continue to think that a good deal of the fuss over precise shades of grey is blown ridiculously out of proportion. In that old thread I was surprised at how many people agreed with me.

I see both sides.

My interest in paint is more academic than most, so I will talk precisely about it for the most part. I can understand how some people wither want to have the most accurate model they want, or don't want to worry about mixing etc, and merely want a close match. I don't think either view point is inherently more correct than the other. I'm somewhat in between. I want to start off with "the" correct color and weather from there, but am sometimes lax in how close to "the" correct color I am due to the circumstances of the actual original paint.

Well I will say this. For the purposes of knowing the correct color, whether it gets on the model or not, I'll always know who to ask, Tracy.

I have a great deal of respect for the people who research colors. My own personal approach to modeling puts a lot of emphasis on finding out everything I can about the prototype.

But what the modeler does with that information is up to the modeler. And I don't think that matching prototype colors precisely (with no regard to the effects of scale, light, weather, etc.) is always the best way to build a scale model.

Hence my caveat about the enormous gulf between reality and my built models!