PAINTING GUIDE: WW2 Royal Navy Crew

Over the last couple of years I have assembled quite a flotilla of landing craft to operate as Force S, to deliver a British assault brigade onto Sword beach. I’ve also collected a good number of Royal Navy crew figures to man the vessels, but until now haven’t got very far with actually painting many of them.

Now this is due in part to me needing to invest some time into working out the colours to use. I’ve now played around/tested a few combinations and have landed on this colour scheme. It might not be 100% accurate, but it looks about right to me at the distance they’ll be seen from! It’s worth mentioning I also wanted to find a scheme that would mean I could paint these figures quickly, so while they won’t win any awards they should be table ready quite quickly and be recognisable as Royal Navy crew.

The figures you’ll see below are Raventhorpe Landing Craft Crew.

PAINT GUIDE

These figures are painted primarily as landing craft crews for Normandy, so I’ve gone with a very dark blue for the uniform, a canvas colour for the duffel coats, and grey for the helmets. In practice this scheme could be applied to Coastal Forces crews aboard MGBs and MTBs, or to larger vessels.

Interestingly it appears Royal Navy uniforms were very dark blue during the Second World War, not black or a light blue which you might see now and again. Though Royal Navy crews on station overseas in warmer climes would wear something different – more on that when I get onto Burma one day.

I will readily admit the helmets did give me a bit of a headache. With hindsight it needn’t have, as I discovered helmets could be a variety of colours depending on what was to hand on the vessel. I’ve therefore gone for a grey colour to give some uniformity across figures, a similar colour to the one I used for the decking on my landing craft.

Step 5: VAL 862 Black Grey boots and binoculars.

Step 7: GW Reikland Flesh wash applied to flesh and duffel coats.

Step 9: Once dried protect the figures with a coat or two of varnish.

I’ve done these as a quick job to get them in the landing craft and ready for the table, so these were all painted in an evening. When I have some time I’ll revisit them and do some finessing. For example I’ll dry brush the helmets and highlight the duffel coats, but for now they’ll do. At least they’ll get onto the table.

I do have a couple of packets of the Milicast/Dan Taylor Coastal Craft and Landing Craft Crews, I might have to invest a little more time painting them!