can of worms - new xtradecal spitfire sheet paint colours

[PhantomBigStu]

going to take one for the team here revisit a can of worms that probably been done to death on here, but have tried to read through the threads to little success.

Just received the new xtradecal spitfire Battle of Britain sheet, and there are 4 spits on it, that are not in the standard Sky type S, which is fine plenty of paints on the market for that, however the 4 which aren't type S there is no reference given to what should be used for them,

so any reference to what hobby paints ar BS381 SKy Blue and Eua-de Nil, as well the vague colours refered to as Sky Blue and Pale Blue

no I'm not a colour nazi, I don't account for scale effect and I don't worry about which brand of sky type S is most accurate, I find the colour within the brands I use that looks good and I stick with it

[Edgar]

There were no B.S. colours used during WWII, nor was there an eau-de-nil; some units mixed their own, which apparently caused some very odd results, but it would be wrong to assume that it was a general thing.

[Graham Boak]

WEM Colourcoats did a number of the undersurface colours popularised in Paul Lucas's book for Guideline, which I would strongly recommend you get before looking at any of the discussions that followed his suggestions. I'll have to check if they did a BS381 Sky Blue, I think they did, and they certainly did both the Eau-de-Nil and the standardised Sky Blue. The last has been done by other companies. An anonymous Pale Blue is best regarded as just that - and use the MAP Sky Blue for it.

Much of the discussion was centred around the Eau-de-Nil, which Paul seemed to use as a default, despite only having evidence for three units - all of which had been based closely together in the North East at the time of the change of undersurface colours. Several people consider EdN just an example of poorly-mixed Sky or the closest approximation that the paint companies could use to meet the sudden demand.

Colourcoats are to be re-released by another supplier but this has not yet happened.

MAP Sky Blue is paler and bluer than Sky. It is believed to have been issued from RAF stores in lieu of Sky up until November 1940. It used to be available from Humbrol as 23 but a few years ago it was remixed closer to Sky. RAAF Sky Blue is supposed to be the same colour but to my eye is a more intense blue.

BS381 Sky Blue is darker and has a touch of green. It was not available in aircraft-standard paints.

Eau-de-Nil is a widely-used colour in a number of circumstances and a light green. It was not available in aircraft-standard paints.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Graham Boak

[Nick Millman]

'Standard' RAF paints of white, yellow and blue can be mixed in various combinations to achieve close matches to BS Eau-de-Nil and Sky Blue which could have been unintentional from attempts to create "duck egg blue". Vintage light blue paints are also especially prone to appearing more greenish as the binder yellows with age.

This has resulted, for example, in modern turquoise perceptions of the wartime French gris bleu clair and probably affects the light blue paints of other combatants.

Nick

[Troy Smith]

on a related note, this thread

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234975213-spitfire-markings-of-flt-sgt-george-unwin/#entry1874242

sky was introduced from 6th june on service aircraft and 11th june in the factory.

unit and MU painting is where variations in sky colour(s) are most likely to happen, factory painted planes should be in official sky.

this site - http://www.airhistory.org.uk/spitfire/production.html

lists all the Spitfire built, date of production, First flight.

Look up a serial and cross reference/extrapolate the data.... here's an example from the link

X4382 Ia 1119 EA MIII FF 6-9-40 6MU 7-9-40 602S 10-9-40 610S 14-12-40 53OTU 3-3-41 412S 19-7-41 58OTU 7-8-41 Scottish Aviation 23-1-42 RNAS Arbroath 4-9-42 808S Machrihanish 3 to 11-11-42 880S from 1-12-43 Retd RAF at 45MU 10-9-44 SOC 26-1-45

From this I would say X4382 was in standard sky and with the correct underwing roundels.

Sometimes you are in the realm of a 'best guess' from the available information.

I don't have the xtradecal sheet, what are the aircraft serials in question?

[PhantomBigStu]

the aiframes are

R6800 66sqn code LZ-N September 1940 - underside as 'BS381 No1 Sky Blue'

K9953 74sqn ZP-A 19 June 1940 - underside in the paler 'Sky Blue'

P9323 222sqn ZD-F Summer 1940 - underside in a greener shade refered to as 'Eau De Nil'

N3093 616sqn QJ-Wii August 1940 - Underisde 'Pale Blue' which looks vertiaully identical to Sky Blue, just a tiny bit greyer

does look like I will have to mix based on the replies, which is uncharted waters for me

[Troy Smith]

R6800 Ia 837 EA MIII FF 1-7-40 8MU 8-7-40 66S 'LZ-N' 26-7-40 shot down by Bf109 Crockham Hill Sevenoaks P/O H W Reilly killed dbf 17-10-40 FH19.45

Factory sky. Famous plane, lots of photos.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234961064-spitfire-r6800-lz-n-gravesend-1940-black-replacement-port-gun-access-panels/

The other 3 could be.

N3093 Ia 364 EA MIII FF 13-10-39 6MU 16-10-39 616S 8-1-40 72S 2-9-40 shot down by Bf109 over Tunbridge Wells dbf Sgt Gray killed 5-9-40

K9953 Ia 166 EA MII FF 28-4-39 74S 2-5-39 92S 12-4-40 RAE 6-40 pilot A G 'Sailor' Malancha 7OTU 1-11-40 FAAC 4-3-41 AST 10-3-41 57OTU 16-6-42 air collision with R6883 crashed nr Eshott CE 7-10-43

P9323 Ia 526 EA MIII FF 2-2-40 6MU 13-2-40 222S 'ZD-F' 16-3-40 shot down by Bf109s Isle of Sheppey Sgt Spears abandoned aircraft 31-8-40

[PhantomBigStu]

so xradecal have it wrong then? thanks will just paint it sky then, makes things much easier, and means I can start it ASAP

also cheers for the link, didn't know it was shot down by molders, will have to get hold of the corgi diecast one

Edited April 13, 2015 by PhantomBigStu

[Dave Fleming]

Much of it is based on the supposition in Lucas' book, where he found the anomolous xample and extrapolated that to other aircraft

[Graham Boak]

None of the serials above are listed among the eighteen dig samples in Paul Lucas' book. However, 222 Sq. was one of those units from the North East in early June where the Eau de Nil samples appear to congregate. He also describes BSS 381 Sky Blue as being found too - he actually includes a photo of P9323 with the comment that the underside colour "may have to remain open to question!". There is a 4-view colour profile of ZD.R, serial overpainted, in the BS381 Sky Blue.

A profile does show Malan's ZP.A, serial painted over, with "duck egg blue/Sky Blue". The Sky Blue is represented in the colour profiles by a rather intense colour rather than the paler official shade, but that could just be the limitations of colour printing.

Another profile is R6800 LZ.N, BS381 Sky Blue.

He has a profile of 616's QJ.Y, serial overpainted, with text that 616 are recorded as having "blue" undersurfaces in this period. As indeed others were.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Graham Boak

[Selwyn]

There were no B.S. colours used during WWII, nor was there an eau-de-nil; some units mixed their own, which apparently caused some very odd results, but it would be wrong to assume that it was a general thing.

Edgar

There was an Eau de nil paint used by the RAF before and during WWII. it was not an aircraft colour but it was used to mark munitions. All live British bombs used in WWII had a Eau de nil band painted around its widest point with the explosive fill type stencilled on it in white letters.

Selwyn

[NPL]

and just like in Robot Wars: Let the battle begin!

How was it with BS colours at that time; isn't it a standard that is somewhat later. Having the Hendon book on RAF camouflage during the war it can probably be said that there was a number of field modifications until sky was officially introduced.

But I am not going to join the battle.

[Graham Boak]

BSS381 was introduced in 1930, and Sky Blue was colour No.1, but with few exceptions the Air Ministry did not use BS colours for aircraft camouflage. Postwar those AM colours that were retained were absorbed into the postwar British Standards.

Eau de Nil was also used for the interiors of some military vehicles, particularly signals vans where operators would remain for several hours and the colour was considered restful on the eyes. I believe I've seen it said that RAF vehicles used Eau de Nil as their standard interior colour prewar. Wartime the truck interiors were generally the same as the external camouflage.

There were no official statements made about "field modifications" before the replacement of black/white undersides by Sky in Fighter Command. It is reported that No.1 Sq in France adopted a "light blue" colour, said to have been later adopted by the Air Ministry, so this was likely to be the same Sky then in use on the Blenheims in France. There have been a number of suggestions about what was done "in the field" after the instructions to adopt Sky, particularly in an attempt to explain the number of contemporary reports of (non-Sky) light blue undersides on RAF fighters at this time, but they remain assumptions, at times contradictory.

It was recently said (by Edgar?) that the Air Ministry had released a statement permitting the retention of black/white undersides until supplies of Sky were sufficient, which therefore rules out any official instructions for (or approval of) local mixes. (How the unit was supposed to know exactly what colour it was mixing to match remains unexplained.) The actual evidence for non-standard colours on specific aircraft remains confused and frankly is likely to remain so. Where archaeological evidence suggest specific colours then it is only reasonable to adopt these as a guide, at least to other aircraft on the same squadron in mid-June, but extrapolating to other units or other times can carry no conviction.

[Edgar]

There was an Eau de nil paint used by the RAF before and during WWII. it was not an aircraft colour but it was used to mark munitions. All live British bombs used in WWII had a Eau de nil band painted around its widest point with the explosive fill type stencilled on it in white letters./quote]

The RAF used munitions; they didn't manufacture them, neither did the aircraft factories, so it seems fair to assume the paint would have been applied by the munitions factory.

Aircraft colours were designated by Farnborough, colour samples were produced and issued by Farnborough, and paint-producing factories sent examples of their "wares" to Farnborough, on sample cards, for Farnborough's staff to assess their quality. Some of these test cards can be found in files in Kew.

British Standards, themselves, said they had no input into wartime colours, so it remains a mystery why these attempts continually persist in trying to bring them into these discussions; it's possible that Farnborough took a B.S. colour and duplicated the shade in aircraft-quality paint, there might well be duplicate names, but I've found no evidence, whatsoever, that any wartime paint had a B.S. name or number copied to it.

It was recently said (by Edgar?) that the Air Ministry had released a statement permitting the retention of black/white undersides until supplies of Sky were sufficient, which therefore rules out any official instructions for (or approval of) local mixes.

True:-

Edited April 13, 2015 by Edgar

[John]

There were no B.S. colours used during WWII, nor was there an eau-de-nil; some units mixed their own, which apparently caused some very odd results, but it would be wrong to assume that it was a general thing.

...apart from Middle Stone No.62, which was adopted as, unsurprisingly, Middle Stone.

RAF Blue Grey also appeared in BS381 from, I think, the 1941 revision.

John

[Nick Millman]

And round and round we go again.

Ian Huntley once asserted the existence of an instruction to mix paints in SAM (a memo found in an old Nissen hut?) and then there is the famous (notorious?) Key Publishing Forum revelation of a letter from August 1940 attributed to Wg Cdr WEB Hurst and much used as a stick with which to beat the so-called "colour police":-

"We had to paint some of our kites and for some obscure reason we had to paint them duck egg blue. Why they should choose duck egg blue I can't imagine but ours is not to reason why, so duck egg blue they had to be. Well, to start with we couldn't get any duck egg blue paint, nobody seemed to have heard of it, so the only thing to do was to mix some."

Etc.

210 Sky, 216 Eau-de-Nil and 101 Sky Blue still exist in BS 381C and, shock horror, are more or less unchanged from their pre-war versions. BS usefully publish not just Munsell equivalent values but also more precise XYZ, xy and L*a*b* values for each colour so the comparisons can be calculated reliably. FWIW and for anyone who wants to see what those colours look like I have calculated their Hex values which can be viewed here (ignore the comparisons as they use strange logarithms for those):-

Eau-de-Nil: A9 B7 85

Sky Blue: 84 A8 9B

Sky: AF AF 97

Whether paints matched to those first two colours were really used, as suggested by Mr Lucas, or they were just the happenstance results of attempts to mix 'duck egg blue' with a little age degradation thrown in is academic from a modelling perspective.

Nick

[Edgar]

...apart from Middle Stone No.62, which was adopted as, unsurprisingly, Middle Stone.

I take it you missed this part of my reply:-

"it's possible that Farnborough took a B.S. colour and duplicated the shade in aircraft-quality paint, there might well be duplicate names, but I've found no evidence, whatsoever, that any wartime paint had a B.S. name or number copied to it."

As Farnborough were producing colour charts, with various "stones" labelled on them, in October 1937, it remains a moot point as to who copied whom.

RAF Blue Grey also appeared in BS381 from, I think, the 1941 revision

.RAF Blue-Grey was not an aircraft colour, so is unlikely to have exercised Farnborough, at all.

Edited April 14, 2015 by Edgar

[Selwyn]

There was an Eau de nil paint used by the RAF before and during WWII. it was not an aircraft colour but it was used to mark munitions. All live British bombs used in WWII had a Eau de nil band painted around its widest point with the explosive fill type stencilled on it in white letters./quote]

The RAF used munitions; they didn't manufacture them, neither did the aircraft factories, so it seems fair to assume the paint would have been applied by the munitions factory.

Aircraft colours were designated by Farnborough, colour samples were produced and issued by Farnborough, and paint-producing factories sent examples of their "wares" to Farnborough, on sample cards, for Farnborough's staff to assess their quality. Some of these test cards can be found in files in Kew.

British Standards, themselves, said they had no input into wartime colours, so it remains a mystery why these attempts continually persist in trying to bring them into these discussions; it's possible that Farnborough took a B.S. colour and duplicated the shade in aircraft-quality paint, there might well be duplicate names, but I've found no evidence, whatsoever, that any wartime paint had a B.S. name or number copied to it.

It was recently said (by Edgar?) that the Air Ministry had released a statement permitting the retention of black/white undersides until supplies of Sky were sufficient, which therefore rules out any official instructions for (or approval of) local mixes.

True:-

Agreed that the RAF did not manufacture munitions, but you must realise In peace time live munitions tend not to be used often so they are subject to a servicing cycle. Most bombs were held in open stacks outside and the surface finish gets weathered and damaged and markings fade so stocks of the appropriate paint colours to restore these markings were held, and still are to this day incedentally. I have spent many happy summers days in the past getting some rays sat with a brush repainting 1000lb bombs!.

I did not state that Eau de nil was an aircraft colour, or it was used on aircraft. But it did exist and stocks of this colour were available in the RAF at that time.

Selwyn

[John]

I take it you missed this part of my reply:-

"it's possible that Farnborough took a B.S. colour and duplicated the shade in aircraft-quality paint, there might well be duplicate names, but I've found no evidence, whatsoever, that any wartime paint had a B.S. name or number copied to it."

As Farnborough were producing colour charts, with various "stones" labelled on them, in October 1937, it remains a moot point as to who copied whom.

.RAF Blue-Grey was not an aircraft colour, so is unlikely to have exercised Farnborough, at all.

Not at all. You said:

"but I've found no evidence, whatsoever, that any wartime paint had a B.S. name or number copied to it."

and now we've got the name Middle Stone, so we've moved forward.

FWIW BS381 (1930) had (I think) 4 Stones in it which somewhat predates 1937.

Why would Farnborough not have an interest in RAF Blue Grey?

John

[Graham Boak]

If the RAE were concerning themselves with aircraft/camouflage paints, there'd be no need to pay any interest in the wider range of paints being used by the RAF, e.g inside the vehicles and housing. This does leave open the question about just which authorities did concern themselves with this, but it would be more likely to be an internal RAF set-up rather than outside aeronautical scientists such as the RAE..

[Nick Millman]

FWIW BS381 (1930) had (I think) 4 Stones in it which somewhat predates 1937.

John

61 Light Stone, 62 Middle Stone, 63 Dark Stone and 64 Portland Stone.

Light Stone still exists in BS381C as 361 but is not identical to 61.

Curiously the 1947 RAE report on wartime RAF camouflage does not mention Stone at all and refers only to "Sand", giving reflective values for Light and Dark Sand only.

Nick

[John]

If the RAE were concerning themselves with aircraft/camouflage paints, there'd be no need to pay any interest in the wider range of paints being used by the RAF, e.g inside the vehicles and housing. This does leave open the question about just which authorities did concern themselves with this, but it would be more likely to be an internal RAF set-up rather than outside aeronautical scientists such as the RAE..

Indeed, but Mike Starmer has documented RAE Chemistry Department's involvement with the development of vehicle finishes for the Army, so it would be surprising if they didn't have some input into similar finishes for the RAF.

RAFBG must have been in existence for quite some time before it was incorporated into BS381, so development by the RAE at some point in the 1930s isn't beyond possibility.

John