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Hurricane Spaghetti Scheme


Mark Mackenzie

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Nick. Short of sitting down together with a large pile of photos, and allocating each in turn to "metallic" and "non-metallic" I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the terms "rarely" and "a majority". Few of the ones I've seen look metallic, to me. Some clearly do.

Yes, but some of the ones that have not looked metallic to you have looked metallic to me! Personally I think that the combination of the order and the majority of photographs pretty much settles the matter.

Nick

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Here’s two more SAAF ones.


I am not in the same league as the knowledgeable gentlemen here, but here’s my tuppence-worth..........

With reference to the ’full frontal ‘ one.......could it be that the colour at the base of the prop blades is some

kind of metallic base coat. If so, then surely the spinner (and wing edges) is some other colour.


Cheers,

Etienne.



Hurricane%201.jpg



Hurricane%202.jpg

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So it was aluminium after all - although Graham still desperately wants it to be pale blue! (joking) ;-)

Aluminium Covering V.84 goes back a long way and was developed from the aluminium dope applied to French Nieuports. Used first as a primer under PC.12 in 1918 and then later in the ME reversed as a topcoat with the PC.12 as the primer.

For 98 gallons of V.84 - 260lbs of Nitro-cellulose syrup, 100 lbs of D32 aluminium powder (PC.12 was red iron oxide and carbon black), ?lbs of castor oil, 22 gallons of methyl ethyl ketone, 20 gallons of amyl acetate or butyl, 12 gallons of benzol and 12 gallons of alcohol. Would have gone off like rocket fuel if ignited.

Whether the formula changed since 1918 but the V.84 designation stayed the same I couldn't say.

Nick

Wow, that must have smelled *lovely*, particularly in a hangar in the heat of Egypt!

John

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As for the application of V.84, would the factory camo paint have been removed before the V.84 applied or would it have been sprayed over the camo? If over, then this could have changed to look from a bright shiny metallic to a duller, less shiny look.

Chris

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Those still shots are remarkably clear and unless the base colour was a semi-gloss then that sheen is definitely to my eye is none other than aluminium dope of some sort. Of course given that it was a standard prewar finish I'd suspect that there would be sufficient stocks of it available in the aircraft depots in the ME to easily cater for the comparatively few aircraft that seem to have had it applied in this fashion. As Nick has already noted the over spray from the spinner on the prop blades in that image is quite clear and the sheen is quite marked as we can see and stands out from the duller over sprayed squiggles. Aluminium finishes also wear to a dull finish fairly quickly as do natural metal finishes so we should expect a variety of sheen. The pic taken in the hangar posted in the other threads shows how shiny the initial look was.

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This is why I love Britmodeller. We take a problem that has confounded accurate interpretation for years and, through combined inputs, come up with a plausible answer. Thanks for all the inputs and comments!

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  • 1 month later...

Looking at the second picture on post 28, the nose cone appears to be; V.84 at the base , light blue ahead of the blades, with green streaks.

On the cowling below the man's boot, chips of V.84 show thru the light blue.

On both pictures the wings look to have V.84 on the leading edge fading to light blue with green streaks overall.

At least, this is what I think I see. :undecided:

Garry c

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  • 4 months later...

Sorry to drag this up again.

 

I'm at this stage on my Hurricane and have 3 contradictory sources now.

 

I'm happy to use aluminium as the base colour. Airfix suggest a fairly deep red and green. This doesn't seem daft given the contrast in those black and white photos particularly in that they're darker than the Middle Stone.

 

Then there's the Aussie pilot's diary. Writing a diary in the present, it wouldn't seem unreasonable to hope he hadn't miss-remembered the colours of the squadron's new aeroplanes by the evening they arrived. So that's purple, blue and grey. Ok, that could still work against aluminium. Or maybe the grey was aluminium. Doesn't matter - neither are green or red.

 

Lastly, there's the quote with the V84 reference, which seems fine and should take precidence, but the colours he's talking about are pale blue and green which not only contradicts the pilot who received 6 Hurricanes with grey, blue and purple (with a photograph showing darker contrasting mottles), but seems to contradict most of the photos showing dark contrasting mottles.

 

So, do we think my Hurricane would look better with dark green, pale green, dark red, pale blue, dark grey or dark purple mottles?

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Put yourself in the place of the MU painting these aircraft.  What camouflage paints have you got?  My answer is Dark Green, Light Green, Dark Earth, Light Earth and Middle Stone.  OK, Medium and Dark Mediterranean Blues.  If you really want to justify a purple, then perhaps there were a few tins of the Red Sand that was being experimented with prewar, but I don't think that would go with the DG/DE or DE/MS that was seen with this scheme.

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I agree with your reasoning Graham. There's a possibility that a purple was achieved by mixing a tin of the roundel red and one of several blues available.

 

I wonder if the brightness and glare could alter the perception of the colours out there. I've never been the Egypt, but have some experience of the Caribbean where sunglare makes lots of things look very different in person compared to how they look in the holiday snaps!

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Do both. I've got two 1/72 tin wing Airfix Hurricane I kits slotted for both possibilities when they arrive are released. Already have an earlier attempt with Italian tan as the base, and Italian dark green and red brown mottle (aircraft camo is DE/MS). 

 

In the meantime I'm hoping someone surfaces enough information to either confirm one scheme or even both. 

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This photo (from the previous link to the British Pathe stills) looks very cool!

I wasn't aware before that the line separating "normal" camouflage colours and the silver leading edge was so wavy.

?id=60382&num=142&size=still

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Thanks a lot for all the information you have unearthed on this very special paint scheme.

One of the aircraft from the Pathe stills also tempts me and I would like to know more about it. What do we know about the squadron and the time frame? Or what is your educated guess?

The film mostly shows a formation of three Hurricanes. The lead aircraft ("k") looks like DG/DE, the other seem to be DE/MS, but what is on the lower sides of the desert camouflaged aircrafts? Azure Blue, Sky, ...?

On stills 53 and 54 the serial Z4238 is visible and this Hurri carries no code letter, does it? And all three of them are "tin wing" Mk Is?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi All,

 

Here is another pic and some crops from it.

 

30316500151_9a9e7611cc_b.jpg

 

30316502321_06b44d1cac_o.jpg

 

29772083704_986766dc45_o.jpg

 

30105375460_0015f5f159_o.jpg

 

New Zealand National Library Ref: DA-01323-F

 

Caption information is rather scant, little of relevance other than in the desert 1940.

 

Cheers,

 

 

Daniel.

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This may be old news to the better informed, but I was looking into Bruce Robertson's Bombing Colours 1914-1937 (PSL) on another matter, and came across a list of the official paints standardised in 1923.  They included the familiar WW1 colours PC10 and PC12, but also V84 Aluminium.Covering.  These were cellulose acetate dopes, A, ADP, and ADPT  (Acetate Dope Pigmented tropical).  Appendix II gives a list of the colours used between the wars, listed by RAF stores designation (33B).  In there we have 33B7  Aluminium covering dope (=V84?), followed by 33B36 Aluminium ADP pigmented dope, and 33B37 ADPT Aluminium.   These paints are listed as being withdrawn in 1932.  This is possibly due to a change to standardising on Cellon CX and Titanine T2S finishes, but no equivalent Aluminium number is included.  We do however have the list in Paul Lucas's Battle of Britain book from Guideline, which gives us 33B/158 for Aluminium, to DTD260.  Robertson's list goes up to 126: not all numbers are coloured paints, which suggests but does not prove that 33B/158 was the direct replacement for the APD and APDT dopes.

 

This suggests to me that the term V84 for Aluminium was obsolete long before 1940, its use perhaps betraying the age and experience of the memo writer.  I also notice that where Aluminium paint was used on fabric between the wars, the metal parts would often be painted either grey or left bare metal but polished (at least on Home-based units with lots of spare time).  This suggests that V84/APD may not even have been appropriate (or at least less than ideal) for metal surfaces.  Therefore the likelier paint used was 33B/158 - the practical difference all this means to modeller is nil, of course!

 

Robertson's list also includes separate paints for Red and Dull Red (and blues) for day and night roundels, but let's not chase down that rabbit hole here.

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The Stores references for Aluminium paints given in 'Air Diagram No.2390 - Aircraft Dopes & finishes - Vocabulary Numbers  - Section 33B Items' attached to the Sep 1942 aircraft finishing instructions are, listed under Section III Camouflage Finishes, 118, 119, 120 and 402 to DTD 83A (Cellulose) - with 402 being noted as a 5 gallon container for overseas use. There is no Aluminium paint listed to DTD 314 (Synthetic). 

 

Under Section V Miscellaneous Camouflage Finishes a Lanolin anti-fouling Aluminium is also listed as 367 and a synthetic enamel for brush application as 158 which is the Aluminium cited by Lucas. 

 

The primers listed are Grey, Light Grey, Light Grey for magnesium alloys and red dope, all with overseas container references.

 

These Aluminium stores references continued unchanged into DTD Tech Circular No. 360 Issue 2 of November 1943 but there were changes to the formulae and application of the primer paints which now included a chromate yellow to DTD 911 (Protection of Magnesium Alloys Against Corrosion) for synthetic or cellulose finishes on magnesium alloys. 

 

Nick

 

 

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  • 11 months later...

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