Malta Defender Spitfire Vc

[Edgar]

Where would you like the $64,000 to go? That internal memo turned up out of the blue (pardon the pun,) in a previously unopened (by me) file. There are (at least) another 480 1942/43 files (at a maximum of 21 per day,) which might contain something, and "assume nothing" is always a wise caveat.

Malta appear to have been obsessed (if that's the right word) with blue, from 1935 to 1943, which is why I'm loath to dismiss, out of hand, the idea of aircraft destined for the island being painted that colour; there is, though, the photo of Park's Spitfire (in 1943?) which appears to be in T.S.S.

Incidentally, in 1940, when given the option of using it, they rejected Sky, out of hand, so it would seem unlikely that they would have accepted the "proper" T.S.S.

Edgar

[Peter Roberts]

Interesting additional info here, thanks gentlemen.

I am struck by the mention in the memo posted by Edgar that arrangement had been made to have some aircraft appropriately painted at the factory - ??

Any thoughts on that? IF standard, existing schemes were fallen back on, this would suggest TSS (!) but this obviously doesn't seem to match with what appears to be a single overall colour. From what has been discussed, It would seem that Malta were keen on having their aircraft painted blue, or blues, and had probably been requesting this. So what would the factory have likely used to meet this request - existing colours then were - ??

PR

[Kallisti]

Footage of Spitfire Vc with 4 cannon:

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/spitfire-in-air

[Edgar]

IF standard, existing schemes were fallen back on, this would suggest TSS (!) but this obviously doesn't seem to match with what appears to be a single overall colour. From what has been discussed, It would seem that Malta were keen on having their aircraft painted blue, or blues, and had probably been requesting this. So what would the factory have likely used to meet this request - existing colours then were - ??

It's always possible that only the first Wasp delivery had an ad hoc paint scheme (or schemes.) In June 1942, Supermarine introduced a modification, for the Seafire "To introduce temperate sea camouflage scheme," which probably had its origin in a Local Technical Committee order dated 15-1-42, and it might have been expanded to include Malta Spitfires.

If (big IF) the deliveries went through Westland, they would have had stocks of the required paint, and, in his leaflet in the Aircam on Merlin Spitfires, Ted Hooton said, "Some initial deliveries to Malta early in 1942 in temperate green/grey." As we know, there was no temperate green/grey, so did he mean slate grey/grey? It looks as if Ted had access to Castle Bromwich records, but I have no idea where they are; they could be in Solent Sky, in Southampton, but, equally, there's a branch of the National Archives in Birmingham.

This could still have an awful lot of mileage left, so perhaps Tony's second book, on Malta Spitfires, might benefit from any delay.

Edgar

[gingerbob]

Footage of Spitfire Vc with 4 cannon:

That was fun! Not Malta Spits, but at around the 2 minute mark, note that the third (I think- or 4th) in line has a noticeably darker appearance than the rest. Also, you can see the hole in the cowling for the gun heat augmentor, but the exhausts (at least of the ones they close right up with) don't even have the tube. Not necessary with 4 cannon fitted, since they were for the benefit of the .303s. Anyway, they were sometimes disabled because they produced too much heat...

bob

[Magpie22]

Nice footage but, as Gingerbob points out, they are not Malta based Spits but are from 2 Sqn SAAF over the Adriatic Sea c.1944. There also some stills that were taken at the same time reproduced in some publications, Alfred Price's 'Spitfires at War' springs to mind.

Magpie 22

[Kari Lumppio]

Hello!

This may be ignorant, but can Ocean Grey / Dark Green camouflage be interpreted as sea camouflage? Note low case letters.

I do have Gauchi's Malta Spitfire book and IIRC it (or was it some pilot memory in there) mentions later Spitfire deliveries being in standard grey/green (shoulde be OG/DG, then). So the Day Fighter camo upper colours would have been acceptable flying over la grande bleue around Malta.?

Cheers,

Kari

[tonyot]

The same ex RAF groundcrewman told me that the Spitfire`s arrived at Abbotsinch flown by rather attractive ladies (which is why he noticed them!) and after showing him photos of built up models in various schemes he picked out that the colour scheme on from the MU`s arrival was most likely Dark Earth and Dark Green with light blue (Sky Blue) undersides (the standard scheme for oversea`s deliveries of fighters at the time) and that some had Vokes filers fitted and some didn`t. He went on to say that as soon as they landed they were wheeled into a little hangar to be painted in `desert colours' by painting over the Green using `sandy yellow' (Middle Stone). Those which didn`t have Vokes filters had them fitted at the same time and then the wing tips were removed and put in the cockpit ready for transportation to the docks!

Photos taken at the docks confirm that the Spits were in a very fresh desert finish while being loaded aboard USS Wasp, so this is probably the re painting to which Edgar refers and it seems very unlikely that any `sea colour' scheme was applied at Abbotsinch for the first delivery at least.

Experienced Malta pilots were recalled to lead the flights from the Wasp and upon seeing the bright new desert scheme on the Spitfire`s the leaders (sorry cannot remember the names off the top of my head!) seem to have decided to re camouflage them in a more appropriate scheme, ie Blue Grey,...probably after seeing the scheme on a Wildcat and commenting on how suitable it was for Malta? You can imagine the US Captain saying `no problem, we`ve got some in stock which you can use' in an attempt at making his new allies welcome onboard. For the second delivery of Spits USS Wasp was obviously out of Blue Grey paint and photos would suggest that the desert scheme was retained for some (maybe all?) Spits from this second flight,......but some could have been repainted if suitable paints had been loaded aboard while back in Glasgow,....that is if anybody took the time to locate such paint during the brief period back in Scotland to re load new Spits and get them to Malta asap.

The ex RAF witness who was aboard for both deliveries cannot remember the Spits being painted for the second delivery and did comment that the Captain would not have been impressed by his spotlessly clean hangar decks being `messed up' by mass repainting, so perhaps he wouldn`t allow it to occur again?

As an aside,..rather than being returned to his home station in the UK he was offloaded at Gibraltar to assemble further Spitfire`s for Malta and to load them aboard carriers such as HMS Eagle and then he went to Tunisia, onto Italy and while in Palestine in 1945 he was arrested because he had been reported AWOL from the UK back in 1942! Apparently there was no official record of his service since 1942 as he had been posted around by word of mouth,..ie "we need 3 bods for here,....you, you and you pack your kit and report to the docks" and it took some time to prove his innocence!

Cheers

Tony

[John]

Except that Sky Blue isn't really a light blue, it's a very pale blue grey and in Scotland in April gets described as light grey - I know, I've done the trials! Anything being described as a "light blue" is much more likely to be Azure Blue, which is a light blue.

John

[tonyot]

Except that Sky Blue isn't really a light blue, it's a very pale blue grey and in Scotland in April gets described as light grey - I know, I've done the trials! Anything being described as a "light blue" is much more likely to be Azure Blue, which is a light blue.

John

Hiya John,

When I showed him Azure Blue he said that it was too blue,....but when I showed him Sky Blue he said that that was the one! I can`t say that I`ve ever heard of a Dark Green and Dark Earth Spitfire with Azure Blue undersides flying around over the UK,...but who knows? Didn`t Supermarine continue using Sky Blue for quite a while on its production line too when the Mid Stone/Dark Earth scheme was introduced for factory application?

I`m not out on an ego trip by providing my research on line as it was intended for use in a future book,...I`m just adding my findings in an attempt at trying to help out? I`m in a dark, cloudy Lancashire on an afternoon in March and looking at a model Spitfire with Sky Blue undersides and well,...they still look light blue,....washed out and pale yes,...but still light blue. Don`t forget that he would have seen these aircraft flying overhead too when the light caught them better.

Cheer

Tony

Edited March 14, 2014 by tonyot

[John]

Hi Tony.

No disrespect intended to you or your source, I assure you.

My reservations about the idea of Sky Blue being used as the underside colour of these aircraft is twofold. Firstly, in April last year I masked off the Sky Blue chip from the RAFM book with white card and asked about 30 people of both sexes and aged from 12 upwards to describe the colour. The test was done in bright daylight but out of direct sunlight. Nobody described it as blue. Most said it was grey, some said blue grey and a few (3, IIRC) so some green in it. That leads me to the conclusion that, in Scotland in April, Sky Blue doesn't look like a blue.

My second concern is more historic - why would Supermarine/Vickers have any Sky Blue or go to the trouble of obtaining it if the officially sanctioned shade of Azure Blue was easilly available to them? This was a colour developed specifically for one purpose, the finishing of target aircraft, and was rapidly superceded by Sky. As far as I've been able to find out there was no official use for Sky Blue at all after about May 1940. I could believe that De Havilland might have had some. Also, if Sky was too light for Malta, Sky Blue is even lighter.

Finally, and in more general terms, there is the issue of colloquialism, which we've discussed here before. Azure Blue is a sky blue but Sky Blue is a blue grey!

John

[Nick Millman]

I don't have a dog in this fight but a couple of observations if I may.

Firstly, and perception notwithstanding, Sky Blue is blue. At least it measures as a Munsell Blue 6.1 B 7.6/1.6 even if the clue in the name is disregarded. Geoff Thomas described it as 5 B 7.5/2 but inexplicably matched it to FS 35414 which is a Munsell Blue-Green. There is however no blue-grey category in Munsell, only Blue-Green (BG) or Neutral (N) used for untinted grey. The saturation of the blue hue is very low - 1.6 or 2 on a scale of 0 to 10. Technically it is a mid-blue but light and very unsaturated or low in chroma. A more accurate description than blue grey might be light greyish blue but that is perhaps getting pedantic about the semantic.

In perception of colour context and juxtaposition is everything. Put Sky Blue next to Sky Grey and show the same 30 people and you will perhaps get different results. The relativity of the Sky Grey will make the swatch of Sky Blue appear more blue and some aspects of metamerism will come into viewing such small swatches anyway - see blog. I would like to see properly matched Sky Blue applied to a full-sized aircraft before coming to any hard conclusions about how it might really look to an observer.

Secondly, Sky Blue is a frustrating RAF colour to begin with. It remained in Stores throughout, in all sizes of container and in dope, cellulose and synthetic specifications. Whatever was it used for? Towed targets only? When Air HQ India urgently requested dopes and paints from South Africa in March 1943 Sky Blue was conspicuous by its absence but SEAC apparently required large quantities of Sky and relatively small quantities of Light Mediterranean Blue and PRU Blue. Was Sky Blue or a SEAC version of Sky Blue being sourced locally in India? The declining production of indigo (high tinting strength) in India due to synthetic manufacture prior to WW2 and the disruption to exports of those synthetic equivalents during WW2 might be relevant to this.

It's a mystery.

Nick

[John]

Hi Nick.

All perfectly valid points. I appreciate that seeing the chip in isolation would, of course, preclude comparisons but at the same time I expected the white surround and the bright daylight to emphasise the blue component of the chip and was somewhat surprised by the result. I'll do it again with a neutral grey card mask and see what happens, but I suspect that the blue component is so unsaturated that it won't make a huge difference.

If I get the time I'll paint a larger panel and see what the results are. My suspicion, in advance of doing any such test, is that distance will kill the blue component even further and the perceived colour will move towards white, depending on lighting conditions.

If I'm reading Lucas correctly, the only specified use for Sky Blue was drone targets. Edgar provided a memo illustrating the scheme on a De Havilland design a while ago. Sky Blue was superceded in this use by Sky when it became available. Was the paint just left on the shelf thereafter - probably!

John.

[tonyot]

My understanding regarding the continued use of Sky Blue by Supermarine well into 1942 was the fact that they had large stocks of this colour available to use up before Azure Blue was introduced onto the production line? Most of the Hurricane`s in use abroad apart from N.Africa (where Azure Blue was applied) also had Sky Blue painted undersides and they were still in common use into 1943 in India until older aircraft were repainted.

Anyway,..that`s my take on things,.....the attack can now commence!

Cheers

Tony

[Edgar]

My understanding regarding the continued use of Sky Blue by Supermarine well into 1942 was the fact that they had large stocks of this colour available to use up before Azure Blue was introduced onto the production line?

It would be interesting to know where that came from, since I've never found any reference to Supermarine using Sky Blue on any airframe, and even relatively minor (to us) changes resulted in a full-blown modification appearing in their records.

Examples of this are the removal of the under-wing serials in November 1939, the addition of the white ring in the fuselage roundel in March 1940, (probably) the addition of the yellow ring in June 1940, the December 1940 return to the black port wing, and the deletion of the mirror scheme in April 1941. There are other mods, in August 1941, and November 1941, which probably refer to the start of the Day Fighter Scheme, though I haven't found the relevant papers, yet.

General orders (non-specific to Supermarine):-

7-4-41 an all-Sky underside was ordered.

12-4-41 this was delayed until 22-4-41, due to shortages of Sky paint.

10-7-41 AMO A.513/41 advocated matt black, duck-egg blue (Sky type "S") or a combination of both.

8-8-41 12-8-41, 15-8-41 Sea Grey Medium ordered for undersides.

30-10-41 For service abroad undersides were to be painted Azure Blue.

5-12-42 an order (of some sort - undersides are not mentioned) was issued to use Sky Blue

11-12-42 this was swiftly amended to Sky.

This "They would have done this, done that, or what they fancied" idea keeps cropping up, but the only evidence is entirely the opposite, with the Air Ministry issuing Orders on the tiniest detail, Resident Technical Officers overseeing every aspect of the factories' output, Local Technical Committees having to pass the smallest change before it could happen. The idea that Supermarine would have ignored orders, and done what they liked, doesn't bear scrutiny.

Edgar

[Nick Millman]

It would be interesting to know where that came from, since I've never found any reference to Supermarine using Sky Blue on any airframe, and even relatively minor (to us) changes resulted in a full-blown modification appearing in their records.

Examples of this are the removal of the under-wing serials in November 1939, the addition of the white ring in the fuselage roundel in March 1940, (probably) the addition of the yellow ring in June 1940, the December 1940 return to the black port wing, and the deletion of the mirror scheme in April 1941. There are other mods, in August 1941, and November 1941, which probably refer to the start of the Day Fighter Scheme, though I haven't found the relevant papers, yet.

General orders (non-specific to Supermarine):-

7-4-41 an all-Sky underside was ordered.

12-4-41 this was delayed until 22-4-41, due to shortages of Sky paint.

10-7-41 AMO A.513/41 advocated matt black, duck-egg blue (Sky type "S") or a combination of both.

8-8-41 12-8-41, 15-8-41 Sea Grey Medium ordered for undersides.

30-10-41 For service abroad undersides were to be painted Azure Blue.

5-12-42 an order (of some sort - undersides are not mentioned) was issued to use Sky Blue

11-12-42 this was swiftly amended to Sky.

This "They would have done this, done that, or what they fancied" idea keeps cropping up, but the only evidence is entirely the opposite, with the Air Ministry issuing Orders on the tiniest detail, Resident Technical Officers overseeing every aspect of the factories' output, Local Technical Committees having to pass the smallest change before it could happen. The idea that Supermarine would have ignored orders, and done what they liked, doesn't bear scrutiny.

Edgar

Re refs to Supermarine using Sky Blue see post # 17 in Sky Blue Thread.

Nick