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Author Topic: TID tug colours - WW2.  (Read 22666 times)

mudway

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #25 on: March 08, 2017, 12:04:42 pm »

Could they be either RN B20 or B30?
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TailUK

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #26 on: March 08, 2017, 01:24:26 pm »

Could they be either RN B20 or B30?

A closer match perhaps would be "Berwick Blue" or 507A.   B30 is perhaps a little too green but B20 might be a match.
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Stavros

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #27 on: March 08, 2017, 08:37:00 pm »

I personally dont think we will ever find the definitive answer as the correct shade was never doccumented and lets face it we are talking war years here,Paint was in very short supply and more than likely if they were running short of one shade it was mixed in with another,in any case once the Tid had been steamed up the colour would have changed with all the soot...


This one is a bit like Whar does Tid actually stand for ...no real answer here either




Dace
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mudway

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #28 on: March 08, 2017, 09:16:15 pm »

A closer match perhaps would be "Berwick Blue" or 507A.   B30 is perhaps a little too green but B20 might be a match.


I would ignore that chart completely. We now know that 507B, 507A & G10 are one and the same colour with simply different levels of gloss. Also G45 and 507C are the same colour. Evidence is pointing to confirm that B5 & B15 are the same and B6 & B30 are the same. B55 by definition is a Blue with a reflectance of 55% not a green.
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zooma

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #29 on: March 08, 2017, 10:21:40 pm »

Does anyone know for sure if the inside of the open cockpit of the early TID tugs was painted in the same colour as the main outside colour?

It was not unusual for MTB and MGB boats of the time to have a green interior cockpit colour - was this likely to be passed on to these open cockpit TID tugs?
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Howard

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #30 on: March 08, 2017, 10:50:03 pm »

Zooma,
 I live just a few miles from where these tugs was built in Thorn I with try and see what I can find out.


                    Regards Howard.
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zooma

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #31 on: March 08, 2017, 11:59:47 pm »

Zooma,
 I live just a few miles from where these tugs was built in Thorn I with try and see what I can find out.


                    Regards Howard.


Thanks Howard.
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mudway

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #32 on: March 09, 2017, 12:55:16 am »

Does anyone know for sure if the inside of the open cockpit of the early TID tugs was painted in the same colour as the main outside colour?

It was not unusual for MTB and MGB boats of the time to have a green interior cockpit colour - was this likely to be passed on to these open cockpit TID tugs?
A fleet order in 1943 stated that the horizontal and sloping surface inside the bridge of Coastal Forces craft were to be painted with the darkest colour in the camouflage screen. As most coastal craft after that date had B15 decks, I’d assume this is the colour used.
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zooma

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #33 on: March 09, 2017, 09:56:33 am »

B15 on the colour chart shown in this thread looks black.


I was aware that the inside of the coastal forces craft were often painted green but did not know that the horizontal surfaces were so dark but I would guess that this directive would have also applied to an open cockpit TID as well.
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mudway

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #34 on: March 09, 2017, 11:18:51 am »

As I said, that chart is a waste of time. B15 is a blue with a touch of grey with a reflectance of 15%. Have a look at BS381C 632 Dark Admiralty Grey. It also has a reflectance of 15% and will give you an idea of how dark it is.
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Stavros

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #35 on: March 09, 2017, 09:43:04 pm »

Just to really throw a spanner in the works here on  couple of points about Grey paint


How on earth do you recreate a grey that might well have been lets say for arguments sake No1 and there is enough to do half the hull and they have in the yard a Grey No2 shade and they mix it up and create a grey that you will never match up.I will Guarantee that the majority of them were painted in this way...thus the variants of the grays....Not all of then would have been painted int he same shipyard and with so so many paint manufacterers out there NO actual 2 would be the same....We get this in the car industry all the time...you might well get a Light Admiralty Grey by say manufacterer X and one by by manufacterer X and I will Guarantee you one thing and this is fact they will be a difference.


There was NO industry standard in those days.


Dont believe me then simply go and buy a tin of Dulux lain white and then a Crown one and you will see a difference and they will both be a base white.


Lets face it everybody it is impossible to get a proper true represantation of a Grey tid....we can only guess what will be closest to it...Personally I would say that Any Grey automotive primer would be a pretty darned near match.




Now I am going to throw another spanner in the works .....what was the true color of the Celotex deck covering on the Deck in front of the Bridge and also at the stern and how do you do this to a true scale apperance,the half round timber foot holds are easy Celotex certaintly not




Dave

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zooma

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #36 on: March 09, 2017, 11:12:24 pm »

You make a good point Dave, but the fact remains that although every TID was potentially a different colour shade to the next one there were some that were positively DARKER than others.


It is these darker early open cockpit yes that interests me at the moment as I have just completed my model of one and I am at the painting stage.


From what I can gather those early types used by the US Army were generally darker than most (but not all) others - and they more often than not used paint that was already in the UK - and almost anything (within reason) was used.


My guess is that this could have been just about anything from dark sea grey to light sea grey and almost anything in-between - possibly with a blue hue in most cases and possibly with a green hue in the case of light sea grey based mongrel mixes of paint.


This thread has helped me a lot and confused me a lot and it has sent me in several directions to find out more about the various colours of TID tugs.  Now I am still confused - but a little wiser - and know enough now not to get too hung-up on actual shades as this did not happen in real wartime situations either!


On top of that, these coal burning vessels were often seen very dirty more often than they were seen squeaky clean (as they may have been after their war service had ben completed.)


Now I have decided to use a darker shade of grey  - anything that looks right to my eye - and add some suitable weathering to make it look like it has seen some action.


I also have another s/h TID g/f hull that I may up make with another early type superstructure - and if I do I will paint it in another shade of dark grey - just to be different and to typify the colour variances that may have been seen on them during the early war years .


There are plenty of light grey coloured TID tug models about and I would like to make something a little different that could still be "correct" in so much that some were darker than most of the others!


Thanks for everyones input - it has all been read over and over and has caused me to think again (and agin) about these colour variations and helped me to make my mind up about how I am going to paint my own early open cockpit TID tug(s).
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Stavros

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #37 on: March 09, 2017, 11:31:35 pm »

SO what colour are you spraying the deck and the celotex covering how you done that



Dave
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zooma

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #38 on: March 10, 2017, 10:51:39 am »

SO what colour are you spraying the deck and the celotex covering how you done that



Dave
 


I will probably do what the ship yards did during the war - I will take a look to see what dark grey paints I have in my stock of various paints that I have acquired and mix something up that "looks right" - but they will all be shades of various greys used during the early wartime-period so they could even end up as being an "authentic" colour  :)


The areas of the deck that would have been Celotex covered have been represented by a textured surface that I have achieved with a tiny burr, a Dremel and lots of time!   The deck on my TID is made from plastic card so I was able to mark the areas where the covering started and stopped and made the textured surface areas in the right areas.


After painting and weathering I am hoping this will show the change in deck covering rather than just painting the deck the same all over.


As I said at the start of this thread I am new to making from plan - this is my first model - so I have a lot to learn but I am enjoying the experience and I will find out what works and what does not as I go along and use this experience to benefit my next model .
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Akira

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #39 on: March 10, 2017, 01:06:30 pm »

I am just going to echo Stavros. The USN supplied it's ships, during WW 2, with the base paint, white, and the tinting formulas to make the appropriate colors, while at sea. As such, no two batches were exactly alike. This variation was also applied to yards and builders. In fact, many ships were delivered to the Navy and promptly repaint different colors and patterns. Another significant contributor to color/shade and reflectance variations was U/V degridation which happened exceedingly quickly. Much more so in the Pacific than the North Atlantic, but still a factor.
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zooma

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #40 on: March 10, 2017, 01:10:01 pm »

Painting ships at sea must have been a bit hazardous at times - not too bad on the superstructure but painting the hull could have been "interesting".
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zooma

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #41 on: March 10, 2017, 09:16:39 pm »

I am just going to echo Stavros. The USN supplied it's ships, during WW 2, with the base paint, white, and the tinting formulas to make the appropriate colors, while at sea. As such, no two batches were exactly alike. This variation was also applied to yards and builders. In fact, many ships were delivered to the Navy and promptly repaint different colors and patterns. Another significant contributor to color/shade and reflectance variations was U/V degridation which happened exceedingly quickly. Much more so in the Pacific than the North Atlantic, but still a factor.


it is interesting to know that the US Navy supplied their own paint - as well as using local paint when in the UK, as this adds yet another dimension in the colour variation debate.

I used to live close to RAF Chivenor in Devon and often saw the Hawks displaying freshly painted panels that stood out like a sore thumb when they were first wheeled out onto the apron, but within a few flights the colours had been blended together - partly by being blasted by the air during flight but also by fading in the daylight so I understand why the vessels at sea would suffer the same sort of colour degradation.

The TID tugs would also gain another form of colour degradation from the coal and soot that may not have been cleaned quite so often when in wartime service as they would have been when not in active service ( or later when in private ownership) perhaps.

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mudway

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #42 on: March 10, 2017, 11:05:21 pm »

Just to really throw a spanner in the works here on  couple of points about Grey paint


How on earth do you recreate a grey that might well have been lets say for arguments sake No1 and there is enough to do half the hull and they have in the yard a Grey No2 shade and they mix it up and create a grey that you will never match up.I will Guarantee that the majority of them were painted in this way...thus the variants of the grays....Not all of then would have been painted int he same shipyard and with so so many paint manufacterers out there NO actual 2 would be the same....We get this in the car industry all the time...you might well get a Light Admiralty Grey by say manufacterer X and one by by manufacterer X and I will Guarantee you one thing and this is fact they will be a difference.


There was NO industry standard in those days.


Dont believe me then simply go and buy a tin of Dulux lain white and then a Crown one and you will see a difference and they will both be a base white.


Lets face it everybody it is impossible to get a proper true represantation of a Grey tid....we can only guess what will be closest to it...Personally I would say that Any Grey automotive primer would be a pretty darned near match.




Now I am going to throw another spanner in the works .....what was the true color of the Celotex deck covering on the Deck in front of the Bridge and also at the stern and how do you do this to a true scale apperance,the half round timber foot holds are easy Celotex certaintly not




Dave


Actually the RN was quite organised and had paint companies making paint for them as well as the dockyards who mixed it up and delivered it out to the various bases, ports and ships. They even ran tests using spectrometers at one stage against manufactured paint to see how accurate the colour and reflectance was. They counted the Dockyards as manufacturers too. The RN used pre made enamel in WW1 and onwards. The RAN even had shipside paint made up by manufacturers in the 1920s for delivery to ships. Like the RN, Garden Island, Williamstown and the other yards made up paint for shipment to naval bases and even had a set amount of this paint laid down to be carried by each class of warship.  The RN was quite regimented.
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mudway

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #43 on: March 10, 2017, 11:09:55 pm »

I am just going to echo Stavros. The USN supplied it's ships, during WW 2, with the base paint, white, and the tinting formulas to make the appropriate colors, while at sea. As such, no two batches were exactly alike. This variation was also applied to yards and builders. In fact, many ships were delivered to the Navy and promptly repaint different colors and patterns. Another significant contributor to color/shade and reflectance variations was U/V degridation which happened exceedingly quickly. Much more so in the Pacific than the North Atlantic, but still a factor.


Given their industrial strength, I would have thought that the USN like the RN had paint companies mass producing paint for them.
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zooma

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #44 on: March 11, 2017, 09:25:53 am »

Did the RAF also had access to this same pool of paint manufacture for their craft - or did the RN keep their paint supply strictly for their own use?

It has been suggested that the US had access to paint made in the UK when they painted vessels such as the TID tugs that they used - even if they chose to paint them in a little darker shade. Presumably this was taken from the same source or perhaps paint was made available from the US and transported over?
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Rob47

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #45 on: March 11, 2017, 10:39:09 am »


Possibly to try and bring the colour issue into perspective, from a modern point of view, which will show why although it says Red on the tin what you get is different.


To paint three Chieftain tanks we were issued three tins NATO green and one Matt black.  Boss's tank first painted comes our brill, next one less paint so thinned with petrol (thinners were a fantasy beast), comes out a thinner looking colour but still looks ok, last tank paint nearly gone, so thinned with petrol again, very washy thin appearance but still ok.  A few days in the field and the tanks with thinned down paint start to have the colours fade easily, while the unthinned still looks ok.  A few days in the sun and all three look very different although all painted from same paint, same day.  Further if the matt paints were not stirred for about 8 months!!! you ended up with glorious gloss, so really paint is so variable, 100% decisions just do not exist.
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mudway

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #46 on: March 11, 2017, 11:26:15 pm »

Did the RAF also had access to this same pool of paint manufacture for their craft - or did the RN keep their paint supply strictly for their own use?

It has been suggested that the US had access to paint made in the UK when they painted vessels such as the TID tugs that they used - even if they chose to paint them in a little darker shade. Presumably this was taken from the same source or perhaps paint was made available from the US and transported over?


The RAF was more organised than the RN. The RN’s first Manual of Painting came out circa 1955. The RAF issued theirs in 1928, 1937, 1941, 1947 & 1960. The RAF one even included the size, colour and position of numbers. The RAF after 1928 used BS381 colours with superstructures and decks described as Battleship Grey or Light Battleship Grey. 
 
During WW2, the RN also issued some AFOs covering how RAF launches were to be painted in their colours.


As for the USN, I consulted an oracle, John Snyder, whose reply was that he wasn’t sure if the USN used commercial paint companies to manufacture but they did have their own paint factories at Norfolk and Mare Island.


One thought, the US Army painted it amphibious vehicles in Olive Green. Could they have painted the tugs in that too?  Also, did the USN have an dark olive green like the US Army’s colour?
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mudway

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #47 on: March 11, 2017, 11:27:24 pm »

Possibly to try and bring the colour issue into perspective, from a modern point of view, which will show why although it says Red on the tin what you get is different.


To paint three Chieftain tanks we were issued three tins NATO green and one Matt black.  Boss's tank first painted comes our brill, next one less paint so thinned with petrol (thinners were a fantasy beast), comes out a thinner looking colour but still looks ok, last tank paint nearly gone, so thinned with petrol again, very washy thin appearance but still ok.  A few days in the field and the tanks with thinned down paint start to have the colours fade easily, while the unthinned still looks ok.  A few days in the sun and all three look very different although all painted from same paint, same day.  Further if the matt paints were not stirred for about 8 months!!! you ended up with glorious gloss, so really paint is so variable, 100% decisions just do not exist.


Sorry but they weren’t painted from the same paint if you constantly thinned it. If your logic is correct, a pint of beer which is undiluted is the same as one which is 90% water and 10% beer.
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mudway

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #48 on: March 12, 2017, 03:11:37 am »


The RAF was more organised than the RN. The RN’s first Manual of Painting came out circa 1955. The RAF issued theirs in 1928, 1937, 1941, 1947 & 1960. The RAF one even included the size, colour and position of numbers. The RAF after 1928 used BS381 colours with superstructures and decks described as Battleship Grey or Light Battleship Grey. 
 
During WW2, the RN also issued some AFOs covering how RAF launches were to be painted in their colours.


As for the USN, I consulted an oracle, John Snyder, whose reply was that he wasn’t sure if the USN used commercial paint companies to manufacture but they did have their own paint factories at Norfolk and Mare Island.


One thought, the US Army painted it amphibious vehicles in Olive Green. Could they have painted the tugs in that too?  Also, did the USN have an dark olive green like the US Army’s colour?


Further update, the USN started using commercial paint companies for supply from 1943.
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mudway

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Re: TID tug colours - WW2.
« Reply #49 on: March 12, 2017, 07:59:58 am »

More from the US oracles, the Army did use USN colours not their land colours. So the tug is most likely USN 5N.


Colourcoats have that in their range.   https://www.sovereignhobbies.co.uk/products/us08-5-n-navy-blue
As for USN green/olive, only PT boats shipped to Europe wore that colour.
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