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[Niall]

Puzzled about the colour of WW2 RN depth charges.
Some photos show them light grey, some black/very dark grey.
One very good model of the Flower class made with GLS parts has them dark green!

Does anyone have any definate references?

Thanks in advance.

[Prophet]

its not a simple question to answer, the reason you see them in a many colours is due that diffrent ships/ country's used a colour they though was best suited to the area of the sea there were being dropped, you find that modern days are white or a light grey.



the british used a green, tan, or black colour the same as the Americans.




The Germans, Russians & Japanese tended to go for black or dark greys.


it really went according to a few subjects, one being, which is less common, the colour of the ship so they can't be targeted easily, the other which is the main reason, was to do with the sea colour in the areas they were being dropped making them harder to spot at close range.

There are probably others out there that may say diffrent or correct me, no issues with that, this is infomation i have read, i wasn't there in WW2 so i guess the best people to ask would be the sailors that served during that time and used them.

[DickyD]

Normally dark grey.

[Niall]

Thanks for the replies, they were a great help.

[Jonty]

  Most probably to blend in with the background camouflage colour. In theory at any rate, the bottom third should have been countershaded in white.

[BarryM]

" the other which is the main reason, was to do with the sea colour in the areas they were being dropped making them harder to spot at close range."


Spot by whom? The target would not searching for them by optical means and the throwers would not be caring wanting only to leave them behind sharpish.

Barry M

[Martin (Admin)]

... before or after they exploded? 

[Prophet]

You have to understand that during times of war in hostile areas there were always crew men looking out for dropped depth charges it would be very 'careless' for any captain not to make some effort to spot them to protect his ship and crew from potential slaughter that could be avoided.

 Back during ww2 radar was not that effective at detecting object and ships ( had trouble in telling what it was) and the sound sonar technology was very basic, any charge detected on a radar could easily be mistaken as a large 'fish' (i use that word loosely)
Part of the look outs job was not only to spot enemy ships, but also to look for charges in the water and other dangers, such as rocks in shallow uncharted water.

This is well documented facts that you can find in any museum, or historical record!!

Even today with our modern technology there are still 'spotters' to look out for dangers on the water its been common practice since the dawn of sea faring travel and more so at the time of war.
I have genuine reasons for pointing out your comment as an error in judgement as I have a sea faring family (grandparents one served in the navy, the other in the air force, my uncles served in the army and my brothers army and navy) my brothers still serve today, and am am told first hand of practises that go on, as well my my own knowledge read from books, and my general interest in navel combat history.

The idea of dropping charges in the water is to sink enemy ships/boats/subs or to stop them crossing into areas controlled by other parties , this saves the amount of vessels needed to patrol certain areas constantly where as smaller crafts that require less resources to function can patrol the 'mined' areas, (8 men crew or up to a few 1000, which is more expendable during war?!) this helps maintain a strong fleet that can deployed to areas there needed without compromising areas they secure, as they are still protected in some form.

The other main factors of depth charges is true that they are deployed into paths of ships, since in some waters they have limited manuvarability, and can only travel in certain charted paths they become easy targets for fast drop deployments, this is what you are referring.
This is common practise for war time, but it is one of many practises, and is most spoken off simply because its the most 'heroic' acts where as it is also the most dangerous. (The best stories always live longer.)

Its similar practise to the torpedo launch boats, fast attack crafts that can drop powerful weapon's into a target and escape before any damage can be caused to them, or to fast to be tracked by big slow turning deck guns.

These are all practise of modern warfare but be sure not to over look that fact that dropping charges is more a tactical defence rather then an attack strategy, just this practise has the ability to be both at the same time.

[DickyD]

Brilliant Mr Prophet, so thats the mine explained, now how about getting back to the original topic which was depth charges. 

[RaaArtyGunner]

" the other which is the main reason, was to do with the sea colour in the areas they were being dropped making them harder to spot at close range."


Spot by whom? The target would not searching for them by optical means and the throwers would not be caring wanting only to leave them behind sharpish.

Barry M

The audience at the movies to maintain tension 

[Prophet]

DOH! my appoligys BarryM i retract my comment depth charges are dropped to try to hit subs thats are below the surface, i would say my excuse for mixing up mine deployment with depth charges is due to the fact i wrote this while my 2 year old was having a paddy but one one will belive me!

[BarryM]

Remember the First Rule of Holes?

Barry M

[amdaylight]

I suspect in the middle of a shooting war the color of a depth charge was of little consequence compared to keeping it rust free long enough to do its job. So they probably got painted with what ever color was close at hand and cheap. I got a real lesson in this when I worked for the San Diego Aero Space Museum, the company that had been Consolidated Aircraft, donated a whole collection of paint color samples from WW2. Consolidated was required as part of their contract with the US Navy to take a sample of each color and paint it on a 1 foot square piece of aluminum and then mark it with the manufacturer, color name, lot number and date when it arrived at the factory and keep these in case any one asked, well in 1989 somebody found these and thought that donating these to the museum would be a good way to get rid of them. When I was looking through them (I had to give each one a separate museum ID number) I was surprised at the difference in shades of a particular color.  Take USN Dark Sea Blue for example some were almost a medium blue and some were so dark they were almost black. The rest of the colors were the same with a large range of hues for any one color. At the museum we had several older gentlemen that had worked in the factory during the war so I asked a couple what was up with the variation in colors. Their reply just about floored me, and I quote " Hell we were in the middle of a shooting war and if so if four out of five people would call it blue than that was good enough! We were trying to get as many good airplanes out the door as possible and the color did not make much difference on how well they would fly. I am not saying that the paint was of poor quality just that the color could be off from the standard and no one really cared, besides once out in the fleet and they got shot up the boys on the carriers would daub what ever shade of blue they had on the repairs and with the weathering of the paint from salt air the paint on the carrier would not have matched any way. They did not care if it matched the color that we put on the plane at the factory or not."  So what I took away from this little epiphany was that we as modelers spend way to much time worrying about the correct color of our models that we should. On another web board some one asked the very same question only as it relates to the US Navy, and the reply was gray, what shade of gray? What ever we had on the ship was the answer. So were all this rambling is leading to, paint your depth charges the same color as one of the ships colors and your will probably be right.

Andre
over yonder in Portland Oregon

[pugwash]

There have been some fanciful ideas as to colour floated on this thread - all they got was a coat of dark
(most probably grey as Dicky said) to prevent them rusting in the K-throwers.  Dont forget on a bad trip
they could have fired them all off before the end of the trip.  Nobody had time to see if they would match
the camouflage scheme of the ship they were going to as a lot of different ships had different camouflage
patterns.  It is only post war they started to colour code types of munitions into practise or live or dummy etc.
The rounds you see on preserved warships are just painted in ships grey to look nice for the visitors.
Dicky and Andre have it about right - dark grey or any dark coloured paint which was handy. Q.E.D.

Geoff

[derekwarner]

mmmm have spoken with a few OZ oldtimers who also served on RN vessels & the response was

"same paint as the deck + fish oil..... .....& that dried & looked the colour of shellac in the northern oceans"..........Derek

[Jonty]

  Pugwash is most probably correct as regards escort vessels that expended huge numbers of depth charges on a regular basis. Conside an ML, however, carrying six or eight charges on roll-off racks and hardly ever having reason to drop them. They had time to paint the charges as specified, and did so, often in three colours - dark, intermediate, and white.

[Jimmy James]

The Last time I handled Depth Charges was in 1973 they came straight from the arsenal / depot at Milford Haven and they were painted Mid Grey (Warship grey) I have also seen photos of my Fathers ship (HMS Intrepid [D 10] ) in Malta in 1938 and they were painted the same color but after She came back from the Altmark incident I saw two charges in the starboard rack were painted a darker color (Dark grey ??? (It was a black & white photo)  sorry to be so vague about this but charges came from different depose tended to be painted different shades of grey, some were almost black but most tended to be the standard color of that station or depot ie: Mediterranean Grey was lighter than North Atlantic Grey...
Jimmy   Freebooter