WWII Japanese submarine deck colors

[fred tannenbaum]

Good morning, all!

With the release of the Tamiya 1/350 IJN I-400 and memories of the Aurora/Monogram IJN I-19, I was wondering if anyone knows what color(s) the decks of this navy's submarines were painted?

I've seen pictures of some models with tan decks but I've also seen one or two with a dark gray deck, which makes sense from a camouflage point of view. And of course, the best have the white recognition stripes. I reccently got the new Osprey IJN submairne book but it didn't go into that level of detail.

Thanks for any help! Have a great week.

Fred

Fred Tannenaum
Charlotte, NC

[gerwalk]

Re: WWII Japanese submarine deck colors

Good morning, all!

With the release of the Tamiya 1/350 IJN I-400 and memories of the Aurora/Monogram IJN I-19, I was wondering if anyone knows what color(s) the decks of this navy's submarines were painted?

I've seen pictures of some models with tan decks but I've also seen one or two with a dark gray deck, which makes sense from a camouflage point of view. And of course, the best have the white recognition stripes. I reccently got the new Osprey IJN submairne book but it didn't go into that level of detail.

Thanks for any help! Have a great week.

Fred

Fred Tannenaum
Charlotte, NC

Fred,
not only the deck colors are debatable but also the hull colors. I've seen some color photos and film of the I-400 and I-401 that shows a very dark grey overall (was this a washed out black?). One of the Sen Toku boats had a grey wooden deck but the other appears brown.

What about the lower hull? Most of the paintings show them red but I'm not really sure if this was true.

Very interesting topic. Is there any "Dougie Martindale" of the IJN subs around?