The Perfect Shade of Gray

After buying the models for the Battle of Tassfarango, I began researching what color the ships should be painted. I started with the Japanese ships since they were all destroyers and would paint up faster. One thing I realized after painting some 1/6000 WWI ships is that camouflage on destroyers at this scale is largely irrelevant; the models are simply too small. In addition, the deck color is also irrelevant because the models do not have enough surface area to adequately show the deck color.

So, one question remained: what color were Japanese destroyers painted? The simple answer is, if course, gray. But what shade of gray! I was off to find perfect shade of gray. After some searching I found the ship modeling FAQ which gave color chips for the Imperial Japanese Navy.

My quest was almost complete; all I needed to do was find the shipyard in which the Tassafarango ships were built. A few more Google searches and I determined that the Takanami and Suzukaze were built at the Yokasaka Shipyard. The Oyashio, Kagero, and Makinami were built at the Maizuru Shipyard. And finally, the Naganami, Kuroshio, and Kawakaze were built at the Fujinagata Shipyard in Osaka.

It was at this point that my color search reached a dead end. I could not reconcile the paint color for the Fujinagata Shipyard. In the end, I took my color chips to my local gaming store and started looking through the Vallejo Paint. Given the color chips for the Yokosaka and Maizuru shipyards, I was looking for a dark bluish gray. Given that the real colors would fade differently and I couldn’t get a perfect match for all the destroyers, I decided one gray for all the ships would work. In the end, I selected Vallejo 903 Intermediate Blue.

Painting has been somewhat slow this week; but, the ships themselves are done with sea bases yet to be finished. Pictures will be coming shortly.