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BP Defiant ASR Code colours


iainpeden

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Iain, this link may be helpful:

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234942579-asr-spitfires-revisited/?hl=walrus#entry1348669

Edgar produced an entry in that thread that means red is the colour for 277 Squadron, as I and others had suspected.

My Defiant will have red codes!

Later on they went to yellow, as Edgar tells us.

John

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The only photo that I have seen of a BA coded Defiant is on page 9 of the Warpaint book and the codes don`t look red to me! The red of the roundel and fin flash is very dark, almost black on the b&w photo and the codes are light,..almost white in comparison and different (lighter) to the yellow outer ring of the roundel,...., pointing at Sky or white to me. This aircraft is N3398/ BA-A.

Cheers

Tony

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Chucking my customary spanner in the works, Defiants only lasted a (very) few months in ASR, since it was virtually impossible for the gunner to keep a lookout for enemy aircraft and find a downed airman in the sea, and the pilot's view was less than ideal.

When they were first proposed, the order was that they should have the usual markings, but without the Sky fuselage band and yellow leading edges to the wings; that seems to indicate retaining Sky codes. These files can be a flaming nuisance, at times, and I only looked in this one today, sorry.

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I'll do 2! Thanks for all the help. Anyway, I have just realised I have no dark slate grey in the paint trays so the first Defiant is going to be brown/green with black undersides.

Edited by iainpeden
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Hi

I seem to recall 276sqn used defiants for about a year, from about may 42 until about june 43, mainly from harrowbeer

They had one crash on ops in the early part of '43 in dorset.

maybe the longer use of defiants by this unit was because its area of operations was the south west of the UK ?

So these might have carried the stripe ?

cheers

jerry

Edited by brewerjerry
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There is a photo of T3997 with 276 (ASR) squadron in the Ducimus Camouflage and Markings booklet on the Defiant. It is captioned as 1942 and TSS with Red codes (just AQ, no individual letter) and no Sky band. There could be a black stripe underneath but I think it is much more likely to be just shadow. The red codes are not entirely convincing either, looking paler than the centre of the roundel but then so does the red of the fin flash.

Ross

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  • 10 months later...

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