maltadefender

More reading and digging to do... thanks, Graham!

Thank you! I love the nose art ones from Desert Storm... wheeling the old girls out because no other aircraft could do the job is my kind of story! But maybe there will be quite a few of them so failing that probably 809 Squadron - Squirrel Grey or extra dark sea grey unless anyone else is building them.

Edgar you're a legend, thank you again. After a search on Google Books I think there's a picture of an April Spit in Malta Spitfire Aces - avoided it until now due to the 100% blueness of the Spits profiled in the middle pages. Off to Smiths and for some weevling...

Hello all, Could I join this one please?

Can a newbie play please? Also, are all builds to be the 'real McCoy' or can they be fictional - e.g. Michael Caine's Spitfire AI-A from BoB movie? Incidentally, on the Spit Mk.II I think it should be elligible. The BBMF's Mk.IIa is currently the only airworthy BoB veteran Spitfire - this from their website: P7350 is the oldest airworthy Spitfire in the world and the only Spitfire still flying today to have actually fought in the Battle of Britain. She is believed to be the 14th aircraft of 11,989 built at the Castle Bromwich ‘shadow’ factory, Birmingham. Entering service in the August of 1940, she flew in the Battle of Britain serving with 266 Squadron and 603 (City of Edinburgh) AuxAF Squadron. And hello, by the way!

Now I'm confused... 'Oppidan' was the name for Operation LB - namely the return trip made by HMS Eagle in May. 'Calendar' was the USS Wasp on her own because no Royal Navy carriers were fit, 'Bovery' was the major May delivery from USS Wasp and HMS Eagle, after which Eagle went back to Malta, picked up another load of Spits and pilots such as 'Buck' McNair to launch them on what was called both 'Oppidan' and more commonly 'LB'. More food for thought - and more thanks!

That's just brilliant - what a forum! Thank you! So... a week before 'Calendar' they asked for them to be in sea colours. Order repeated prior to the following month's deliveries on Bowery and LB... while 'Jumbo' Gracie and 'Woody' Woodhall set about trying to limit the potential for disaster with a root and branch reorganisation in Malta, the UK and Gibraltar. Begs the question: did this order get adhered to? It's intriguing stuff. Time to delve a bit further for a photo of an April Spitfire...

It's fun this, isn't it? I feel like Gill Grissom... The PRU pink Hurricane was a real find! From 'Call-Out' by MAM president Frederick Galea (Malta at War Publications, 2002), using the records of the Kalafrana and St. Pauls Air Sea Rescue units, we have: 21 November W/Cdr Dowland, CO of No. 69 Squadron, had undertaken a low-level photographic run on Sicily in the squadron's pink-painted photo-reconnaisance Hurricane (Z3053) during the early morning when he was attacked by MC.202s. He was obliged to bale out into the sea from 12,000 feet. Dowland was picked up an hour later, having been spotted in his dinghy by one of the Hurricane pilots looking for him. Chandler [LAC Philip Chandler, an armourer at Kalafrana whose diary records much of the ASL's work in the book] records: 'This morning HSL107 rescued a Hurricane sergeant pilot who had been shot down. A little later the Swordfish rescue seaplane took off. We heard him coming in not very long afterwards and at the same time saw the ambulance pull up on the slipway. We dashed out onto the armoury roof. There were three people in the seaplane and only two had gone up. As the third man, who ws wrapped in a blanket, was helped out of the cockpit, our flight sergeant who had binoculars trained on the scene, recognised him as a wing commander from Luqa. I don't know whether he was shot down in the earlier dogfight or crashed by accident. He seemed not much the worse, however. He was carried ashore pick-a-back by one of the ground crew and walked to the ambulance after a word with some of our officers who had come to the scene.' 'Call-Out' is a brilliant way of clearing out 23 Euros, by the way! On the Gladiators, there's a degree of supposition because of the lack of definitive evidence. We accept that they were in 'standard' FAA colours while they were crated up awaiting the next ship off the island in June 1940 and that in the initial six weeks when they were there without support nobody had time to mess about with the paintwork beyond patching it. Yet for all that there's one shot of four Gladiators at Hal Far where the nearest is apparently much darker than the others with camouflage way past the waistline and matching wheel disks. Quite what the last machine standing looked like a year later is anyone's guess, with its Blenheim engine and numerous other mods but there are references to it being in green and brown so I'm happy to go with that as the 'last of the (very) few'. With the Hurricanes, the underside colours are a matter of conjecture in all theatres including the Battle of Britain, where Sky, Eau-de-Nil and light grey are all apparently to be found. Or not. Things are further confused because not all of the deliveries were originally intended for Malta and it's pretty clear that 'their airships' in the UK were somewhat begrudging in what was sent overseas anyway... cast-offs is a fair description! However photographs from Egypt show that the Hurricanes flying in via Malta were arriving in Dark Green/Dark Earth/Unidentified Blueish-Greenish-Greyish hue and being repainted. From what the archaeologists have found in Malta they simply refer to the undersides as 'Sky' but they could well be Eau-de-Nil or light grey. On the Spits, for the initial delivery in March (Spotter) the photographs of the launch and the first aircraft to land at Takali tally with every contemporary Temperate Land Scheme picture I've seen. Finding a picture of one of the April deliveries from the USS Wasp (Calendar) is impossible. All but five of the Spits were destroyed within the first couple of days, in a month where the airfields took a heavier tonnage of bombing than London took through the Blitz... my guess is that if anyone was carrying a camera they probably didn't hang around long enough to take a photo! The USS Wasp loading photo you're referring to, if it's the one I'm thinking of, is from the May operation (Bowery) when the Spits were painted in Desert scheme. Fortunately one of the consequences of the disastrous April operation was sending 'Jumbo' Gracie back from Malta to oversee it and make sure that everything was fit for purpose from the outset - guns harmonised, pilots briefed and not just novices etc. I think he took one look at all those Spitfires painted for the desert and raised the roof... it's hard to think of a more conspicuous scheme for the Med. He had already been rampaging around Whitehall, Bentley Priory and anywhere else that might help... somebody ordered a seaworthy paint scheme and had the clout to get the order sent out. My guess is that 'Jumbo' made such a fuss that they'd agree to anything to get rid of him and duly sent the order for a repaint. I'm looking forard to building my Malta fleet, all the more so because there's the added element that maybe they'll all be wrong anyway!. Ive got stacks of Spit Vbs and Vcs and Hurricane IICs - if anyone's got a lead on where to find Hurricanes without hat racks the front I'd be grateful...

This has become a bit of preoccupation of mine lately - a year spent reading up on the siege and a week's visit that got extended thanks to that lovely volcano in Iceland. Anyway, having done some poking about with the help of the guys at the Malta Aviation Museum, I've got a bit of a rule of thumb: Gladiators on Malta The Gladiators were unpacked and put together in Temperate Sea Scheme. When the one surviving aircraft was rebuilt in the summer of 1941 and used for met flights, locating lost pilots and as the 185 Squadron hack it was re-covered and re-painted in Temperate Land Scheme. Hurricanes on Malta: All Hurricanes delivered to Malta were in Temperate Land Scheme, initially with black/white undersides when flown overland and on the first delivery from HMS Argus (Operation HURRY). Thereafter Hurricanes were delivered with Sky undersides - including the Mk.II models (even the Mk.IICs, which surprised me a bit). Quite how this happened when the order to change to Dark Grey/Dark Green/Medium Grey was given on 15 August 1941 I don't know... but it gets stranger! Only those aircraft that were then ferried on to Egypt were repainted in Desert or Tropical Land. On Malta they remained in Temperate Land Scheme - with a few exceptions. There were some variations - 249 Sqn flight commander Tom Neil painted the spinners on his flight's aircraft red in June 1941. When Laddie Lucas arrived early in 1942 only one of these aircraft was left and he hastily repainted the spinner to avoid drawing unwelcome attention! The night fighters were either black all over or had black undersides and the recconnaisance aircraft of 69 Squadron included both the famous 'bosun blue' Mk.I and a PRU Pink Mk.I (the latter being shot down in November 1941). The only Desert Scheme Hurricanes to serve in Malta were those ferried back across from Egypt by 229 Squadron in March 1942 in support of the dwindling number of serviceable aircraft on the island. There are aircraft that look like they're in a lighter scheme but this is largely down to the effects of bleaching and the film stock used. Spitfires on Malta: Now here's the really odd bit: on both the first delivery in March 1942 (SPOTTER) and the second delivery in April 1942 (CALENDAR) all aircraft were painted in Temperate Land Scheme (Dark Earth/Dark Green/Sky with either Sky or Black spinners). For the twin deliveries in May (BOWERY and LB) the original colour is believed to be desert but the aircraft were ordered to be repainted in Temperate Sea Scheme for better concealment of their arrival and subsequent action over the Med. I believe that those aircraft travelling on HMS Eagle were repainted with Sea Scheme on the upper surfaces but retained Azure Blue on the lower surfaces - as per many of the Beaufighters that followed them later in the year. For those aircraft on USS Wasp there were no supplies of FAA paint and as a result the blue/grey mix was concocted. After these deliveries every Spitfire arrived in Desert Scheme and were either kept in this scheme or had blue/grey painted over the mid-stone as they stood out so badly against the blue of the Med. With concealment on delivery being less of a concern and with air superiority gradually being hauled back from the Axis I guess there were other priorities. So there we are: that's about as much sense as I've been able to make out of it as a rule of thumb... It's not copper-bottomed but makes some sense at least - although there are more than a few profiles, paintings and models that need adjusting if it's anywhere near accurate. My Corgi 261 Squadron Hurri Mk.I for a start! I'm trying to make a 1/72 collection of all the different permutations as I go along. Loving the forum, hoping to take part in a group build or two...