Royal Navy submarine colors of WWII?

[mOONwOKA]

Hi everybody,

I am one of those, sometimes called as "anglophil". I wanted to build RN submarine of WWII for a long time, and siply forgot, that I actually have one! It's ORP Dzik (U type coastal submarine), released by Maly Modelarz (twice!) and A. Halinski - all are the same model. I have the earliest edition, which is typical "old MM" - very crude cardboard, not very nice print quality either, but virtualy no color mismatches. When scanned it looked even worse, so I repainted most parts in PSP. However I have a simple question - what should the colors be? The grey/green with red undersides looks OK to me, but what shades or codes or whatever? I am a little familiar with RAF colors and FS, but totaly unfamiliar with naval ones. I made appropriate changes to represent P44 HMS/M United, although I suppose most of RN submarines wore the same scheme.

thank You in advance.

 

[GEEDUBBYA]

Howdy Moonwoka,

OK, here is you a link to some reference material for british royal naval subs, I am not sure what all is there, but it looks like a fairly good place to start.

http://www.rnsubmus.co.uk/

and on this page, still the same site, you can find email addresses to various departments of the museum that you can email and ask for more information and possibly some photos?

http://www.rnsubmus.co.uk/contact/contact.htm

the photo department of the museum can be emailed at:

photos@rnsubmus.co.uk

Heck, here is the whole list of email addies to look at :

Contact the Royal Navy Submarine Museum



The Royal Navy Submarine Museum
Haslar Jetty Road
Gosport
Hampshire PO12 2AS

Tel: 023 9252 9217
Fax: 023 9251 1349

Financial matters accounts@rnsubmus.co.uk 211 / 231
Admin and general enquiries admin@rnsubmus.co.uk 225
Archives archives@rnsubmus.co.uk 226
Business Services Manager bsm@rnsubmus.co.uk 230
Curator curator@rnsubmus.co.uk 228
Education educate@rnsubmus.co.uk 223
Giftshop gifts@rnsubmus.co.uk 241
Keeper of Artefacts artefacts@rnsubmus.co.uk 227
Marketing brian.seeney@media3.co.uk 023 9235 1920
Photographic Department photos@rnsubmus.co.uk 234
Technical Support tecsupport@rnsubmus.co.uk 235

For enquiries about the website; please contact

Annabel annabel@gavial.co.uk

I hope this helps in your search.

have a nice day,
Greg aka GW

 

[jrts]

Hi

These two might help a bit.

With the colours of subs, it was all down to what area they operated in. Ones for the Med had lighter colours than North Sea boats, the Med being some what shallower than the North Sea. Boats in the Med could be seen by aircraft even at depth.

If you let me know what type of boats and the areas you want the colours for I will contact a few mates at Dolphin and see what they can come up with.

Hope this helps

Rob

 

[mOONwOKA]

Hi
These two might help a bit.

With the colours of subs, it was all down to what area they operated in. Ones for the Med had lighter colours than North Sea boats, the Med being some what shallower than the North Sea. Boats in the Med could be seen by aircraft even at depth.

If you let me know what type of boats and the areas you want the colours for I will contact a few mates at Dolphin and see what they can come up with.

Hope this helps
Rob

Thanks fot the pictures. As I wrote in my first post, I am building HMS/M United (U type, 3rd batch) which operated in Mediterranean and sunk italian destroyer. I'll try those emails, posted by GEEDUBBYA, but any additional information would be appreciated.

Gabriel

 

[Bernhard]

jrts is probably right that submarines in the Mediterranean Sea are easier spotted from the air than in the North Sea. However, I object to the reason he is giving.
Submarines are not harder to see from the air in the North Sea because it is deeper than the Mediterranean. Depth depends of course on the particular spot where you drop your plumbline. On average, however, the north sea is impressively shallow. The average depth is a mere 55m (180ft) and the greatest depth of 660m (2200ft) is measured near the coast of Norway. The Mediterranean on the other hand has a couple of zones which are deeper than 3000m (9000+ ft). So, I'd say the Mediterranean is the deeper body of water.
I assume the true reason for the better visibility in the Mediterranean is the fact that its waters are crystal-clear compared to the silt-laden broth that makes up the North Sea. If you have bathed in both seas you'd probably agree.
Bernhard