Correct colours for french ww2 aircraft?

[sapperastro]

Hello all,

 

I have a couple of French WW2 aircraft kits incoming, and wish to know exactly what colours to use with them. Especially the 3 tone upper (bluey grey, brown, green/light blue underside).

[Black Knight]

Try this website for a starting guide

http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/colorcharts/stuff_eng_colorcharts_france.htm

[spitfire]

This might help as well

http://memorial.flight.free.fr/nuancier.html

Also I collected this on my travels, I think it was from Modeldad over on HS.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[sapperastro]

Thanks Blackie, that is a great website, but I didn't even think to look at that section...

 

Spitfire, thank you for both of those links. Now I can hold my swatches up and get a (as far as monitors allow, good match for any of my differing paint brands.

 

I should be able to suss out the correct colourcoat paints with these too.

 

Thanks again gents. I appreciate the help.

[spitfire]

If you want to use enamels I have used MM, Colourcoats and Xtracolor on my French builds, depending on the aircraft, for my Bloch 152 I used  ACF07 Kaki, ACF04 Chocolat, and X125 the latter only because of the gloss finish as ACF009 Gris Bleu Clair (Fonze?)  is just as good a colour match, for my MS406 I used the same paints.

The Hawk 75 was a bit different as the paint was applied in the field so I used different paints to show this, ACF06 Ombre Calcinee, ACF08 Vert and X125.

I decided on these paints using the small number of reference books I had available, most useful were the MMP books, Curtis Hawk H-75 in French service and the Topcolors books 17 Fighters over France and Camouflage and decals book covering the CR714, MS 406 and Curtis Hawk.The Histoire &Collections French Aircraft 1939 to 1942 also came in handy.

For the undersides Gris Bleu Clair I used X127 Blue FS15414 as per the above references.

Hope this is useful

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[sapperastro]

Just on the Colourcoats after looking at them on their webpage, ACF04 Chocolat, ACF08 Vert and ACF09 Gris Blue Clair for the top and ACF10 Gris Bleu Ciel for the bottom. Or does this look a little light for a WW2 scheme? I have a Bloch 152 and a LeO 451 on the way. I will have to see if I can find some of those reference books you have named here. I primarily just want to do French schemes before the armistice, at least for my first round of french aircraft.

[spitfire]

The ACF04 Chocolat and ACF09 Gris Bleu Clair look great but the Kaki looks a lot more realistic than the Vert, here's a wartime photo of a D520 that shows it well.

 

 

Here's my attempt at an MS406 and a Bloch 152 using Colourcoats and Xtracolor as mentioned.

 

 

 

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[sapperastro]

Is that a four colour scheme spitfire?

The reason I ask is because of the colourcoats swatches on their website have the French Kaki being a very dark greyish hue, similar to the colour on the tail. The Kaki I am seeing in that picture, near the exhaust vents, seems more like the tried and true Khaki of uniforms and so on. Perhaps I am actually colour blind...

[spitfire]

I would not get too hung up as from what I have read the paint varied quite a bit, plus the colour photo though it is a genuine wartime photo has been scanned and re scanned so many times that the colours may have shifted quite a bit.

I did go through quite a few travels until I got a paint scheme that I was happy with as well as the books that I have mentioned I also bought the colour chips from Iliad Designs and a selection of MM paints which I tried on my D520. During this process I also made up some colour chips of the various model paints for comparison before making my final choice, overall the Colourcoats paints came out best though the names do not always match the French charts but as my French Language skills are zero I wont go there. Here is an initial chart that I made out.

 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Hi all,

 

I'm very late here but Dennis has done sterling work in answering your questions.

 

In general we have been getting L*a*b* colour values for colours as they're remanufactured and using these to calculate RGB values and then create rendered images for the webstore. The original images (and there are still many - the grainy ones) are not always good representations. These were scans of painted swatches and whilst lighter colours worked quite well, darker ones didn't and greens especially were really bad. The scanner struggled with green and everything came out with a strong blue caste to it. We know these are not ideal hence the efforts to replace them with renders, but it's a lot of work getting colour values and it ties up the factory mixing computers retrieving them so it's slow.

 

I guess in summary, don't hang your hat on the grainy images in so far as making judgements. I'd go with Dennis' recommendations on this