I am mostly a tank guy,,but I recently decided to build the Oscar II 1:350 kit from Revel.

The upper and lower surface is painted a semi gloss black (seemed right but let me know if there is a better color match). I am at the point of getting ready to weather. What are the best colors to duplicate the wear and tear of the sea on the subs hull.

I don't know much about Soviet subs except that they were a matte black color above the water line when on the surface.They may have had red lead paint below.

Back in the early '80s as topside watch w/ binocs, I saw numerous Echo & Foxtrot class subs outchopping the Med (Straits of Gibraltar) as we inchopped. Both sides had to ride the surface when entering and exiting the Med. We would wave at each other as we passed closely by. It was a wierd/exciting feeling to see our "enemy" leaving knowing that a replacement had already taken his place and we would have to track him sooner or later.We would play cat & mouse with them our whole run, usually 6 mos.

As far as weathering, subs look matte black on the surface. The upper deck was painted with what we called Non Skid paint which was a rough/ textured black paint (Epoxy) to keep the crew from sliding into the drink while manuvering topside.

The sub had to undergo drydocking to pressure clean the hull periodically to reduce noise due to cavitation and to maintain the boat's top speed.

A typical sub had barnacle and algae buildup just below the waterline when moored. The entire red lead painted area would be coated a blanket of green "grass". This mess had to be cleaned off with pressurize jets and a slurry of crushed walnut shells. The nozzles had to be manned by 3-4 man teams because of the pressures emitted. It was very tiring work to sat the least. Most of the barnacle formations would be a the bottom of the boat and had to be scraped by manual labor by the Seaman Gang (E-3 and Non Qual Pukes).

So how would you depict the algae/barnacle build up?

Dom

Take a look at these photos from the US Navy. You'll see how a "black" sub is really made up of various shades of gray. One way I would tackle this is with pastels. A light gray wash would work too.

http://www.navy.mil/view_gallery.asp?category_id=17

The last modern Russian boat I built, used fairly typical armor methods on to finish. Below the waterline I preshaded the panel lines with a dark brown/ black color, and then went over it with several light shades of tamiya hull red. After that, I did some light panel highlighting with hull red lightened with about fifty percent red-brown. Once that was applied, I dot filtered it with some raw sienna, indian red and burnt umber, and finished off after that dried with some pin washes on the panel lines with MIG dark wash.

Above the water line, I made a mix of of about 75percent german grey to 25percent flat black with a few drops of blue as a base coat, and did panel highlighting with an almost completely black mix. Did the same dot filter method topside only more restrained and only using some lamp black, paynes gray and a very very limited use of white. The effect is easy to over do on a nearly black finish and Ill admit it took me several attempts to get it to the tone I wanted.