Mountbatten Pink, also called
Plymouth Pink, is a
navalA navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions...
camouflageCamouflage is a method of crypsis that allows an otherwise visible organism or object to remain indiscernible from the surrounding environment through deception. Examples include a tiger's stripes and the battledress of a modern soldier...
colorColor or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
, a shade of
mauveMauve is a pale lavender-lilac color, one of many in the range of purples....
, invented by Louis Mountbatten of the British
Royal NavyThe Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...
in autumn 1940 during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Mountbatten was escorting a
convoyA convoy is a group of vehicles traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support, though it may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas.-Age of Sail:Naval convoys have been used for hundreds...
and noted that one ship in the group vanished from view much earlier than the remainder, a Union Castle liner that was still painted in its pre-war medium
lavenderThe lavenders are a genus of 39 species of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae, native to the Mediterranean region south to tropical Africa and to the southeast regions of India. The genus includes annuals, herbaceous plants, subshrubs, and small shrubs...
mauveMauve is a pale lavender-lilac color, one of many in the range of purples....
greyGrey or gray describes the tints and shades ranging from black to white. These, including white and black, are known as achromatic colors or neutral colors. In recent years, "neutral colors" had been reclassified...
hull colour. Mountbatten became so convinced of this pigment's efficacy as a camouflage during the dawn and dusk periods, before the sun was visible but was near enough to the horizon to tint the sky this shade of pink, that he had all of the
destroyerIn naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, short-range but powerful attackers .Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels without the endurance...
s of his flotilla (the 5th flotilla) painted with a similar pigment, a medium grey (507B) with a small amount of
Venetian RedVenetian red is a light and warm pigment that is a darker shade of scarlet, derived from nearly pure ferric oxide of the hematite type...
mixed in. By early 1941 several other ship captains began using the same camouflage, though no formal testing was done to determine how well it worked.
One of the anecdotal and possibly apocryphal tales told in support of Mountbatten Pink was the story of the cruiser HMS
Kenya (nicknamed "The Pink Lady" at the time due to her Mountbatten Pink paint), which during
Operation ArcheryOperation Archery was a British Combined Operations raid during World War II against German positions on Vågsøy Island, Norway on 27 December 1941....
covered a commando raid against installations on
Vågsøy IslandVågsøy is a municipality in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Nordfjord. The municipality's administrative center is the town Måløy. Vågsøy is also the name of the main island in the municipality with an area of 64 km²...
off the
NorwegianNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
coast. The Germans fired on the
Kenya for several minutes with coastal guns but she sustained only minor damage from near misses. This was attributed to her Mountbatten Pink camouflage blending in with the pink marker dye the Germans were using in their shells, preventing German spotters from distinguishing between shell splashes and the ship.
A later refinement of the basic Mountbatten Pink camouflage was the use of a slightly lighter tone of the same colour for the upper structures of the ship. By the end of 1942, however, all vessels of destroyer size and larger had dispensed with Mountbatten Pink, although it is believed that smaller vessels retained this colour until well into 1944. The primary problem with Mountbatten pink was that it stood out around midday, when the sky was no longer pink, and the traditional
battleship greyBattleship grey is the drab shade of grey used for battleship camouflage....
was much less visible.
This colour was also used by the British SAS on their Land Rovers during desert operations.