This may be a loaded question but what color was 5-L on the Yorktown CV-10. Some paint companies make something called light grey but they are all over the place in color!
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Color 5L US Navy camo paints were a combination of a base color (white) and a tinting paste (purple/blue) The mixing formula was a certain number of pints of tinting paste mixed into a 5 gallon bucket of base color… 5-L Light Grey was a very very pale bluish grey color… There are many companies producing it for WWII US Navy modelers Just search USN 5-L Light grey… The tints are all over the place cause most people are not sure of the exact mixture ratio… Paint that was mixed at the factory of Naval Yard was usually one color and would match more closely, paint mixed at a repair base could be several shades and bluish tinted greys… They also made 5-S Sea Blue, 5-N Navy Blue, & 5-O Ocean Grey from the same materials… And all of them can have variations based upon when and where it was painted…
Ships 2 the official US Navy regulations on Ship Painting during WWII
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gmarch, what time period?
How light is light gray? How dark is dark gray? How medium is medium gray?
To determine a match for your particular preferred brand of paint to 5L Light Gray, you should probably compare it to a paint standard such as the Snyder and Short paint chips. The SHIPS 2 color system has no relation to the ANA system, Fed-Std, BSC, RAL, Pantone, or other color system. The closest you may come to other standards is the 1929 Munsell Book of Color on which the SHIPS2 colors are referenced. Note, use only the 1929 or earlier Munsells, subsequent editions have changed
Where to find an ‘accurate’ 5L, or other SHIPS 2 color? These are matched to the S&S chips; White Ensign/Sovereign COLOURCOATS - enamel, TruColor - acetone based lacquer/enamel, Squadron ScaleColors - acrylic.
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Hi Ed,
The real point is that there is no definitive formulation for the US Navy early war blue based camo colors… Your guess is as good as mine… The best estimations are all based upon the S&S paint chips but they still vary… We can pretty much know what the individual schemes are and there are enough photos (even in black & white photos to show us a representation of the patterns to go with the pattern charts…
So most modelers give the best color representation they can from what is available… It’s a judgment call… there is nothing wrong with it or anything based upon it, but there is no exact color reference out there…
I’m not going to drop names of the persons that have done the research of the exact colors, (including me) but the research has been going on for decades, has caused a lot of consternation in the WWII naval modeling community, which continues to this day…
There is a known 5-L color, the color of the tops at Pearl Harbor just before and during the attack, but that is pre-war 5-L and is darn near white… Everything changed after pearl… Heck even Admiral Kimmel and Admiral King couldn’t agree when the color debate was actually going on…
Everything manufactured today has been based upon the records and what little evidence is actually in the records… There is no definitive answer to what is Ships-2; 5-L Light Grey…
Go with what looks good to your own eye… In my eye WWII US Navy 5-L Light Grey is was a light whitish grey with a bare hint of blue tint… Easily confused with white…