I’m starting a build of the New Jersey in its WWII configuration. I need the colors for its grey paint job including the red uull. I haven’t done a ship in a while, much less something from the 1940s. I’m going to try to get it done for my kid’s birthday in Sept. and hopefully in time also for Modelpalooza.
I’m hoping to be able to use enamel paints because the last time I tried masking over acrillics the tape pulled off the underlaying paint, even after having it sit for aboiut a week. This time I put a couple layers of Taniya spraay primer on the hull and am letting it sit.
You will need to decide on what date. From 43 to 44 she was in Measure 21, all over 5-N Navy Blue, for vertical surfaces. The Decks and howrizontals were in 20-B Deck Blue.
In 1945, sh went to Measure 22, which was 5-N Navy blue to the lowest point on the main deck horizontally along the hull. Then 5-H Haze Gray on all verticals above that low point. Decks & horizontals were still 20-B Deck Blue.
A note on Measure 21. It’s a bear to model. 20-B and 5-N are very dark, to near black, and near indistinguishable in real life. This makes a model a near “black hole” visually. Even picking out the various 20mm barrels in blackish gunmetal is not going to help so very much.
Measure 21 was very effective at night, and on the deep indigo blue of the Pacific. It landed New Jersey the moniker “the Black Dragon” during the war.
Now, there’s a cool opeion that not much modeled out there: Operation Magic Carpet, where ships were pressed into service to help bring comabtants home to the US. The ships were all in Measure 22, but with the ships’ names painted in 72" tall unshaded white letters amidships, and, for the major flag ships, “bright” decks (as they had full wartime crews with not nearly so much to do, so sanding the 20-B off the decks put them to work).
New Jersey would not go to Haze Gray with Deck Gray decks until 1946-7.
Now, as to which colors render those historic ones correctly, that’s an ongoing debate, and very much subject to interpretation.
So I have the wrong color wooden decks for WWII and will have to order a new set. Just my luck. What company would you recommend for the paint? I don’t need it to peel off when removing the masking.