Royal Navy Paint Range Changes
In the mid 1990s, Colourcoats was established as the first model paint brand offering shades specifically for modellers of Royal Navy subjects, based upon the most comprehensive information available at the time.
In recent years, the delving of some individual enthusiasts into primary source documents in various National Archives made it clear that there were conflicts, anomalies and some straight contradictions between the widely held wisdom on the matter and what was actually written down in black and white and communicated to the fleet through the official channels at the time. For the past two years we have been working with these individuals by bringing us all together to pool our resources; each having discovered separate, isolated pieces of the larger jigsaw puzzle. Combining this with industry expertise sought and willingly given by several recognised experts on paint chemistry, we have been able to determine which anomalies are the result of incorrect assumptions and which were in fact correct identification of the correct paint, but that the old oil paint samples have significantly colour-shifted in the many decades since they were first made.
Regular customers of Colourcoats' Royal Navy products may have already noted the migration in our webstore now started. The entire RNxx range is now discontinued and will not be remanufactured, however they will remain available until existing inventories are depleted. An entirely new range coded NARNxx is to replace our Royal Navy offering. Initially this will accommodate the 1936-1950ish era, but spacing has been left in the numbering to migrate the earlier shades in due course.
Colours which are simply being renumbered without a shade change are:
RN28 becomes NARN20
RN01 becomes NARN23
RN02 becomes NARN24
RN18 becomes NARN25
RN04 becomes NARN28
RN07 becomes NARN33
RN09 becomes NARN39
RN19 becomes NARN42
RN24 becomes NARN44
RN27 becomes NARN45
RN26 becomes NARN46
In addition, Royal Navy paints previously in the “Modern” range have been brought into the Royal Navy range:
M16 becomes NARN50
M23 becomes NARN51
M01 becomes NARN52
M19 becomes NARN53
M02 becomes NARN54
All other NARNxx colours are new products, whether altered slightly or significantly from the similarly labelled product from the out-going RNxx range.
Our new range is as follows, organised vertically by appropriate time period and horizontally by camouflage tone. This organisation should assist the consumer (along with our research papers) to quickly spot and exercise caution over colour scheme references which demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding by "cross breeding" paint ranges.
[PERIODIC TABLE OF ROYAL NAVY COLOURS WENT HERE]
Products NARN20 and NARN21 are offered in parallel as alternatives to each other, NARN20 being a 13%RF version of Home Fleet Grey with NARN21 offering a 10%RF version. Similarly, as the greens used in the 1943 "B" series were specified in quantity but not in type, we offer NARN33 as B.5 or B15, and an alternative NARN35 as B15 with a greener caste. It can be seen from the above that G10 replaced bother M.S.2 and 507A, whilst B30 replaced both M.S.4 and B.6 and B55 replaced both Western Approaches Blue and Western Approaches Green. Lastly, B20 replaced G20 from mid 1944 (with a brief overlap).