Hobby color - přechodová modrá

The middle tone of the naval three-tone camouflage

The shade came into being as part of the scheme that the US Navy introduced at the beginning of 1943. The fuselages and wings of carrier-based machines were given three bands: a dark blue upper surface, white undersides and, between them, exactly this cool blue-gray tone. The transition between the upper and lower color was meant to blur the outline of the aircraft against the water, whether an opponent was looking at it from above or from the side.

It was carried by Grumman Hellcats, Avenger torpedo bombers, Dauntless dive bombers and the late versions of the Wildcat, the machines that decided the fighting in the central Pacific. In photographs from the period the band is often markedly faded, because salt water and tropical sun raised its lightness within a few weeks at sea.

How to work with it

The binder is acrylic and dissolves in water, so brushes rinse out without any odor. It can be applied with a brush as well as with an airbrush; for a smooth transition between the three bands it helps to spray freehand from a shorter distance and at lower pressure, or to mask with a roll of putty lifted above the surface.

The shade over time

If you are building a machine after a longer deployment, mix in a drop of white and brighten the middles of the panels. A freshly delivered aircraft from the factory, on the other hand, will take the shade just as it is in the bottle. The package holds ten milliliters and is enough for several models in the common aircraft scales.

In smaller scales it pays to lighten the tone very slightly, because the eye perceives a small area as darker than it really is. On a large model, by contrast, leave the shade as it came out of the bottle and create the differences later by picking out the panel lines and lightly brightening the middles of the panels.