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[boat captain]

Hi

Can anybody tell me the best humbrol colour for these vessels?

[radiojoe]

Hi, I have used Humbrol gull grey No 129 satin acrylic, on all of my ships, it looks right to me for British warships, it gives a kind of weather bleached appearance, I just wish they would sell it in larger sizes, I painted my 1:48 admiralty tug with it and pored 6 of the little pots into a jar and mixed together to make sure there was no shade changes. 
Joe.

[mudway]

 The answer is none really as they don't have any of the various shades of grey, green or blue which the RN used back then.
 129 is FS595 26440 which is better known as the Gull Grey colour (color!) the US Navy used to paint their aircraft.
 For accurate paints, try White Ensign’s paint tinlets
 

[Jonty]

No simple answer - depends on which particular ship, the period, and where it was operating. If you use a single colour the best bet is probably AP507A, a dark grey close to Humbrol 27. Do have a look at the White Ensign website, lot of info there.

[mudway]

 As Jonty said, first find out the intended year of the vessel, try for some photographs as ships weren’t always in camouflage colours. There are books out there on the camouflage colours of vessels and classes.
Which class/ship are you building?
Re 507A, I’ve dredged the attached out of the garage and it has seen better days but some time back I did a piece of plastic up with White Ensign’s 507A, then tried to find a Humbrol match. I’d go for 79 (Blue grey) which is darker than 27. RN greys always seem to have a blue tint to their greys.  We matched 507A up over here using computer matching & the paint guy was surprised at the amount of blue in it.

[Jonty]

 Alternatively, later in the war, many ships had the hull in AP507A and upperworks in the much lighter AP507C or its later equivalent - G45, mudway? Decks were probably B15, a dark blue-grey a little lighter than AP507A, and probably painted over planking as well.

[mudway]

 The two tone scheme came out in 1943 via CB3098 and were known as Admiralty Alternative and varied into 4 main schemes,
1)    Western Approaches where the lower darker colour was G45 and then white above,
2)    Alternative Light  G20 the lower darker colour and G45 above,
3)    Intermediate > the lower hull colour was G20 and upper works were G20 in other words overall G20. A novel description of a two tone scheme!
4)    Dark Scheme where the hull was G10 in flush decked or half way up the forecastle deck in stepped decks and G20 above.

Alternatives for the “new” colours such as G10 if they weren’t available were listed as:
G10 use AP507A
G20 > AP507B
G45 > AP507C


After that came the Standard schemes which had the ships with panels of different colours painted.

Whatever you are building, you really need to know the year and pray that you can find a photo of the ship or its sister and work from that.

The 1943 disruptive camo schemes were laid out by ship class which is why I asked which ship/class.

B15 does have a close standard colour BS381C 636 PRU Blue.

[Jonty]

  Between mudway and myself we have probably totally confused you. To go back to your original question, if you wish to use a single colour a dark blue-grey is a better bet than a light shade.

[mudway]

I'll stick with my same old questions. What ship and what year?

[boat captain]

It is a Glynn Guest design called HMS TEAN based on a river class Frigate as it is stand off scale I will go with blue grey.

Thanks for all your help.