About merchant ship wartime colours

[Mister_M]

Originally Posted by gap

... black and white paint, which for sure wasn't in short supply at that time

This is just your opinion.

Originally Posted by kapuhy

I doubt cost of paint would be a consideration compared to any ship's value, (especially since paint needed was probably already on board - as noted in gap's link, all they needed is to mix black and white paint they probably had stored since these were most common colours during peace) but with ships operating in low risk areas their captains could indeed decide the risk is too small to warrant the time and effort needed to repaint them.

In real life, I don't know how much time it was needed to repaint a whole ship. Maybe lack of time ? Lack of crew ? Lack of equipment (in wartime, all is restrained) ? Lack of... money (and you will have to repaint again the ship after the war) ?... Or even other things that we just cannot have an idea or we just cannot imagine...

Originally Posted by kapuhy

As for rules for peace-painted ships and coal burners in convoys, there were obviously exceptions, as shown by photo here (atlantic convoy in 1941, phot taken by Robert Capa):

One photo cannot say anything about the whole story.

Maybe coal burners were not repainted grey because it was totally useless to try to camouflage a ship which produces so much black smoke !...