Lazy8

I photographed AMPO at Stanstead in May 1983 when the Space Shuttle came to visit. Not the best picture I've ever taken, but to my mind it shows white engine nacelles with light grey outer wings, bare metal inner wings, and silver-doped control surfaces. I flew in AMSV in 1986. The wings and tailplane were white, with silver doped control surfaces. As you can see, AMRA at that time had yet another variation...

It is certainly possible, and I also have an Academy C-97 which is earmarked for the conversion. One day... In addition to the points mentioned above, note that the doors onto the lower deck are on the opposite side on a 377 to the C-97. Same places, just a mirror image. The props were a vexed issue throughout the Stratocruiser's early career (and the C-97), and there will have been a variety of configurations, maybe on the same aircraft at different times. Careful checking of photographs is called for. In a nutshell, the problem was the size of the propellors. They needed to be so large to absorb the power from the R.4360 that they also had to be hollow and lightweight (=thin skinned) to avoid being too heavy. Such large, hollow blades created their own problems, one of which was condensation forming internally, which tended to 'rot' the blade. You don't want to be nearby if an R.4360 sheds a blade at full power... After a number of attempts, the solution eventually adopted was to drill holes in the tips so that any condensation was thrown out as the prop turned. It's that which gave the aircraft it's unusual, characteristic sound.

It does depend on what you're looking to depict. The standards were: BOAC (VC.10) ICI 431/2042 - ACT 273 - 5137 BEA (Trident (Speedjack)) Polyurethane F407-515 or F407-715 but these would apply only after the aircraft had been repainted by their owners. Out of the factory, both BEA and BOAC allowed the manufacturers to use their own choice of light grey. This may have been the same, but I'm not aware of any correspondence which would have let the airlines know what had been used. I would not be at all surprised to learn that for the VC.10 the grey ex-factory was RAF Light Aircraft Grey, and that probably holds true for other manufacturers and aircraft. The company repaint colours are generally almost indistinguishable. One can, particularly on photos of Tridents, sometimes pick out a number of shades of grey in the same line-up, which perhaps shows that they weren't too fastidious about following the standard for a 'non-livery' colour, but it may also reflect the fact that the Tridents went back to Hatfield for a number of modifications and may well have been repainted by DH as well as the airlines during their lives. For what it's worth, the light grey colours used on the BA centenary retrojets were these: 747s BAC 7025 Airbus Wings 'Aeroflex' Fuselage BAC 707

OY-DAM flew in to Shoreham on 8 April 1940. Overnight, the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway, so when the crew returned to the airfield on the morning of 9th, they were not permitted access to the aircraft. It did not fly again in DDL markings, but it was 12th before the bright orange was given a quick hand-painted overcoat of camouflage - my speculation, but this may well have been top and sides only, so the orange undersurface would have remained. The aircraft did not have a British registration at that point, and again did not fly. The British registration was allocated on 15 May, and G-AGAY was ferried to Whitchurch at the end of the month, for storage as BOAC could not find a use for it. The brush-painted camouflage remained until June 1941, when the aircraft went to Cunliffe Owen for a complete overhaul. It would appear that the few photographs of it in British markings were taken after that. And of course it crashed on 12 July, having done not very much in British markings.

Looking through Rob Mulder & Gunter Ott's book on the Fw.200 with Danish Air Lines, it seems likely that all the internal surfaces around engines and undercarriage were silver. I assume that's an aluminium lacquer rather than just bare metal. In the whole book there is just one photo of a Condor with the flaps down, on approach to land, and the internal colour is not apparent. I would suggest they were never parked with the flaps down.

They were painted by hand, not to any standard size. Not all of them were even precisely circular or concentric. There are no surviving documents to reference. Scale from photos - no-one will be able to tell you you're wrong.

There is nothing to be gained from the movie depiction of the inside of an airliner being accurate. Airlines and airframers won't want anyone telling the entire world how to take one apart, and the movie industry won't want to be sued if some clown does try it. It will be as far away from reality as it can be and still look plausible.

Not the DH.86 exactly, but in Ron Davies' 'Airlines of Latin America since 1919' there's a picture of CX-AAS San Alberto, one of the two DH.90 Dragonflies that PLUNA bought first. Looking at the picture along with the caption, it is red all over with cream lettering, although one or two fittings such as the window frames and wing-root fairing seem to be bare metal. Below that there's a picture of CX-ADH, the prototype Potez 62-1 which PLUNA acquired after the DH.86, in an obviously different colour scheme - the caption mentions that it kept it's blue-and-silver air France colours. PLUNA operated two DH.86Bs. CX-AAH was built as G-ADEC for Hillmans Airways, loaned by them to British Continental Airways and then joined British Airways Ltd, who sold it to PLUNA in October 1938. CX-ABG was built as G-ADYE for British Continental Airways and joined British Airways Ltd when it took BCA over. BAL sold the aircraft to PLUNA in November 1937.* BCA's colours were overall silver with a red and blue cheat line. British Airways DH.86s adopted Hillmans' colours, which for the DH.86 were blue fuselage with white letters and silver wings with blue lettering. I don't have a picture of a PLUNA DH.86 to compare with, but if you do, hopefully the above will help you interpret the colours. *Those dates make the registrations look to have been issued in the 'wrong' order - I took them from Gatwick Aviation Society's 'de Havilland Biplane Transports', and they do seem to agree with other published sources.

No problem, Gooney Fan. If it works for you, that's the most important thing.

A bit late to the party, but I'll help as much as I can. The blue we used for the 747-400 BOAC retro-jet was BAC5148. We think that's a very good match, but the honest and slightly embarrassing truth is that it appears no-one really knows for sure what the original colour was. In almost all documentation it is referred to simply as "Corporation Blue", perhaps with a stores reference, but those stores are long gone... We believe it is the same blue used throughout BOAC's existence, and, for that matter the same blue used by Imperial Airways, who also just called it "Imperial Blue" or "Company Blue". The best we could manage by way of a colour reference is in the 1947 BOAC aircraft painting guidlines, where it gives Dulux paint codes. Sadly a check with them revealed that that particular code was part of a set of customer-specified paints (i.e. for many different customers), that the numbers were issued chronologically depending on when the first order was placed and otherwise meant nothing, and that they hadn't kept the records anyway. I live in hope that lurking somewhere in our archives is a complete discourse on the paint colours, their chemical composition and so forth, but if it's there it's very well hidden!

Serials on wartime camouflaged BOAC aircraft were officially black with a 1" silver outline on top and sides, plain black underneath. It looks from photos as if the silver outline was regularly wider, but it might just be that its relative brightness makes it seem more prominent. In the early days of the war the camouflage was applied hastily (and often removed after only a day or two to meet other perceived requirements) and it is clear that, for instance, the Frobisher fleet retained their blue reggies for quite a time. Once camouflage was regularised (early 1940 or thereabouts) the registrations remained black with an outline until after the war. The only variation was the grey registrations applied to a few Moquitos and Yorks towards the end of hostilities, but these still had the silver outline.

Imperial's archives are frustratingly light on detail. The registrations were supposed to be dark blue on all passenger-carrying aircraft. There is circumstantial evidence that aircraft intended only to carry cargo were supposed to have black registrations, but they were so few in number that it's difficult to be sure (just the two Bolton-Paul mail carriers, really). Shorts got into trouble for delivering the two L.17s, Scylla and Syrinx, with all the markings in black, but I have yet to unearth any evidence as to when, if ever, they were repainted correctly. Again, there is some circumstantial evidence that some of the C-Class boats were delivered with black markings, but by the time this may have happened there was a lot going on in the world and there were other things to think about (like camouflage). If the colourised photo you're talking of is the one I think it is (with the Shell bowser in the foreground), the blue is way too light. The actually colour was dark - almost certainly the same colour as BOAC used, although there is no specification for it in the archives (that we've uncovered so far). The regular use of a yellow filter by photographers using monochrome film (primarily to make the sky more 'interesting') tends to make the already dark blue indistinguishable from black in most photographs, which has perhaps added to the confusion.

In the 1947 BOAC scheme, the outline to the Speedbird and so on is painted Gold. No specification, just Gold. In the printed Design Standards book it is a metalic gold. In the 1965 BOAC scheme, all the gold parts are gold Scotchcal - a decal, very shiny, comes in big sheets and still available. First use of this seems to have been on the VC10s, or possibly 707s. In between, there was no one standard. The outline to the blue stripe was first applied to the 'Monarch' class Stratocruisers - the other external difference on those is that they have the crest on the nose. That should have been metallic gold to match the gold on the crest decal, but it would appear that some of the maintenance people interpreted 'gold' as a shade of yellow. Non-metalic paint was cheaper and easier to apply, so yellow-called-gold was fine. Again there doesn't seem to be a single published standard, but it's most likely that the contemporary Dulux catalogue would hold the shade that most, if not all, used.

Think it through. Either the elevator is split with a variable gap in the middle when it is deflected (and some potentially interesting aerodynamics), or it has to have a straight hinge - otherwise it can't move.

The Negus scheme for the Viscount has the tailplanes in Grey F338-3801. They were white for the BEA Red Square livery, and polished metal for the BEA Speedjack livery.