United States Navy
Ships - 2
Supplement to second revision of Ships-2
March 1943
Application
Pattern Layout.
The laying out should present no special
difficulty. Straight lines can commonly be drawn by snapping a chaulk
line, and curves can be made by tracing the arc of a loosely held rope.
In many cases the contours of patches can be sketched in freehand, either with
a piece of chalk on a pole or roughly indicated with a long handled spray
gun. It will avoid confusion if designations such as 5-H, 5-L, etc., are
chalked inside the areas.
While it is desirable that the fundamental character
of patterns be retained, it is rarely necessary that time should be lost in
making exact measurements with a steel tape. For example, the Haze Gray
patch on the starboard profile of Design 1D, Plate XIX, starts from the edge
of the deck at a point approximately 65 feet from the bow, nut it would
be a waster of time to measure it off exactly. Standing at the after end
of the forward gun turret the painter could simply walk to the side of the
ship and put a chalk mark for the end of the patch. Such a method of
locating the paint areas is quite good enough.
Working Drawings.
Detailed working drawings of specific designs for
specific types of vessels and sample color cards of the colors used in each
design will be furnished upon request to the Bureau of Ships.
The laying out of any design is much more readily
accomplished from larger and more detailed drawings than is possible to
publish in SHIPS-2. The Bureau of Ships is preparing larger scale
drawings to be issued to the yards and painting depots.
Painting Techniques.
A new and very effective style of camouflage is based
on soft, misty areas of color. This type of painting is somewhat
difficult to apply with brushes but is a "natural" for spray
painting equipment. It is the simplest way to break up the long, sharp
lines of a ship.
Areas of one color are sprayed on over a dry
coat of another color. The best effects are obtained with high-pressure
air-gun sprays. Good equipment will spray a mist coat at the rate of 50
to 75 square feet per minute. A recently designed portable outfit covers
at the rate of 500 to 600 square feet per minute.
Most all modern painting is done with spray, Without
masking, edges are automatically soft. By increasing the distance of the
gun from the ship and moving the gun rapidly, big , graded shades are easily
achieved.
Pattern Adaptation.
It will be frequently necessary to adapt a
design made for one type of ship to a vessel of quite different
construction. In such a case the best course is to use one of those
patterns, such as Design 1B on Plate XXIV or Design 17D on Plate XX, made up
of large areas of paint with soft edges or soft and sharp edges. These
designs, which for the best results should have spray application, are
intended to break up the silhouette of the ship and this result will be
accomplished even if the pattern varies widely with the working
drawings. In designs of this type, target angle deception is merely
incidental, but there are other designs in which it has received careful
consideration and will be lost if the changes necessary to adaptation are made
at random.
In painting a ship from a plan issued for a inherent
type, it is not a good practice to start at the bow and lay design off in
proportionate measurements. The best plan is to key such a design to the
bow and stern and superstructure with due though for breaks in deck level and lengthen
or shorten the design in the less critical spaces between these points.
Improvisation will frequently be required. In
general, carry the color of adjacent areas over any new gear or additional
structure, but there are some instances where deviation is better than
repetition. For example, if you have to apply a design showing only one
stack to a two stack vessel it is invariably good practice to paint the two
stacks in different colors. The reason for this lies in the value
derived from partial visibility. If one stack is Ocean Gray (5-O) and
the other is Light Gray (5-L), there is a large chance that both will not be
equally visible on the same day. Not only will the vessel be first
identified as a one stacker, but the possibility of estimating the target
angle from the position of the two stacks will be greatly reduced.
For the same reason it is often good policy to paint two masts in different
colors.
Paint colors.
Any number of shades of Blue-Gray can be mixed from
Dull Black, White (5-U), and Blue-Black tinting material (5-TM).
Likewise any number of shades of Gray-Green can be mixed from Black (13),
White (5-U), and the new Green tinting material (5-GTM). Many of the
Blue-Gray shades are already well known by name.
Camouflage colors and shades are listed in Tables I
and II in the order of their lightness (reflectance) from White (75 percent
reflectance) to Black (2 percent reflectance). They are mixed by adding
a given number of pints of the tinting materials to a designated number of
gallons of the white.
The tinting materials (5-TMa, 5-BTM, and 5-GTM), Deck
Blue (20-B), White (5-U), and Dull Black may be procured from:
Mare Island Navy Yard.
Norfolk Navy Yard.
Navy Yards, stations and supply depots.
Commercial manufacturers and dealers.
Since January 1943, commercial paint manufacturers
have been furnished Navy paint formulas and paint color cards from the Test
Laboratory, Navy Yard, Philadelphia. Many private paint manufacturers
are on the accredited list and may supply yards, docks, and private
shipbuilding companies with tinting materials or with certain stocks of
the paints listed already mixed.
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