Mountbatten pink, also called Plymouth Pink, is a naval camouflage colour resembling greyish mauve. It was first used by Lord Mountbatten of the British Royal Navy during World War II. After noticing a Union-Castle Line ship with a similar camouflage colour disappearing from sight, he applied the colour to his own ships, believing the colour would render his ships difficult to see during dawn and dusk. While the colour was met with anecdotal success, it was judged by experts to be equivalent to neutral greys at best and would make ships with the colour more obvious at worst.
History
thumb|right|250px| [[Supermarine Spitfire|Spitfire with mountbatten pink camouflage applied]]
In 1940, while escorting a convoy, Lord Mountbatten noted that one ship in the group vanished from view much earlier than the remainder. The ship, a Union-Castle liner, was painted lavender mauve grey. Mountbatten thus became convinced of the colour's effectiveness as a camouflage during dawn and dusk, often dangerous times for ships, and had all of the destroyers of his flotilla painted with a similar pigment, which he created by mixing a medium grey with a small amount of Venetian red. By early 1941, several other ships began using the same camouflage, though no formal testing was done to determine how well it worked.
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,
The Kriegsmarine likewise experimented with a light pink shade. The Royal Navy prisoner interrogation report of crew rescued from S 147, a Schnellboot sunk in the English Channel in April 1944, states they believed the boat's overall pink shade was effective.
Usefulness
thumb|right|250px| [[Land Rover series|"Pink Panther", famous SAS vehicle, as was used during Dhofar Rebellion]]
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 Archery covered a commando raid against installations on Vågsøy Island off the Norwegian coast in 1941. The Germans fired on the Kenya for several minutes with coastal guns but she sustained only minor damage from near misses.