Dazed baffled and confused

[speedbird]

Hi guys I really really hope someone can help me hear, I'm almost at the painting stage with the old airfix Lancaster B(I) special with the grand slam bomb. I really would like to finish her as a 617 squadron machine in the daylight scheme but I'm getting so much conflicting information that now I'm compleatly lost. The kit instructions show the 617 machine as being finished DE DG OG but I have seen images and statements on the the Internet and in books and even examples in ready for inspection on here that show her finished in the LE LG OG daylight scheme. I know ultimately it's down to personal taste and what information one cares to believe or interprete. It's said that only three lancasters were finished in this scheme and I'm not sure if YZ-j PD119 was one them.

[Edgar]

Early in 1945, 617 asked for, and got, permission to do away with black undersides on their Tallboy aircraft, because they were making a too easy target for flak during their exclusively daylight raids. They were told that they could use the same Medium Sea Grey as day fighters.

Post-war, a well-respected (in flying model circles) artist and modeller was allowed to inspect some of (not just one) 617's Grand Slam aircraft, and he reported that he found them to be Light Green/Light Earth/Ocean Grey. This has been ridiculed in some (modern) modelling circles, with various theories put forward about how he was mistaken, e.g. paint MSG over black and it would appear Ocean Grey (carefully avoiding any explanation of how DG/DE over black would appear lighter, of course.)

(Slightly) simpler might be to look for an explanation as to why he might (with around 30 years experience) actually have been right, and there's a possible clue in the Scale Models article. The Grand Slam aircraft were virtually defenceless, often carrying only two guns and 2 seconds-worth of ammunition, and the Tallboy aircraft were tasked with giving them cover. In a well-spread out gaggle (vertically as well as horizontally) swift recognition would be vital, and a completely different scheme might help with that.

This is entirely my own theory, so you're welcome to make of it what you will.

[speedbird]

It's swings and roundabouts or slides and climbing frames. It would seem to me that in the end there is no right or wrong answer either way and there are counter arguments for and against. I rather like the daylight scheme and it makes a change from the standard night bomber colours. I think I'll got for the daylight scheme and if YZ-J was never finished in those colours then so be it. If I could figure out how to put pics on here I would show it once finished and maybe do a wip do you all could share the pain I had cross kitting the engines lol. Cheers guy

Edited May 31, 2015 by speedbird

[Troy Smith]

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234917903-gram-slam-lancaster/

since links don't always get read, here the relevant bits, has pics of YZ-J, note black fin.

Steve,

The TLS may have been Light Earth/Light Green, see these earlier posts:

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.p...mp;#entry395725

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.p...p;p=773673&

and on Hyperscale:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/149674/thre...%28Long+post%29

IWM hase some nice photos of Grand-Slam Lancasters, below (if you havn't already seen). The contrast between colours does look strong in these photos.

Cheers,
Mark

"What is truth?", as Pilate asked.

This is not going to be a helpful answer. The question of Grand Slam Lancaster colours is a classic illustration of the fundamental dilemma of who and what you personally decide to trust as evidence. In this case you have:

- the evidence of your own eyes, viewing photographs which have been reproduced and rereproduced and probably viewed on a monitor with not necessarily reliable colour/tonal reproduction;
- logic based on AMOs, finishes applied to other similar aircraft, availability of paint and any other factor(s) you care to dream up;
- first-hand eye-witness testimony.

In this particular case the eye-witness evidence is of rather better quality than the "From what I remember they were brown and green." type reminiscence. As he recounts in the January 1976 Scale Models (pp.24-28), on 18 June 1946 the aviation artist C Rupert Moore made an officially-sanctioned visit to Mildenhall to collect data and talk to aircrew to support his commision to produce a colour frontispiece for Aircraft of the Fighting Powers Vol VII. I quote from his text:

"The only satisfactory way to find out exactly what colour an aircraft is is to go and examine it in the field and there are only 3 satisfactory methods of recording those colours. Either to carry the necessary equipment to enable one to make an exact colour matching in the field; to check against official colour samples; or, in the case of a crash, to collect bits of wreckage with the colours on them. I have used all 3 methods and and from small oblongs have prepared a series of 'Field Cards', consisting of a row of contemporary colours mounted along the edge of a narrow card. My first colour sample was collected in the grounds of the Doncaster Grammar School after a BE2e had crashed there nearly putting paid to the whole of our form. The Field Card I used during my visit to Mildenhall was prepared from an official set of MAP Colour Standards issued in August 1944. The aircraft I examined most closely was YZ-Z PD121. All the colours were non-reflecting MATT finish and let me state that the only time a heavy RAF bomber at this period had a glossy finish was when it was wet." [Capitals and italics as original.]

I quote all this to illustrate that IMHO this guy was being as scientific as the technology of the day permitted. Anyway, at the end of all this, he explains in 4 paras of detail the colours: "...the colours were changed. 'LIGHT GREEN' replaced 'Dark Green' and 'LIGHT EARTH' replaced 'Dark Earth'. Undersides were 'Ocean Grey', including the bomb-bays, undercarriage legs and other accessories. .... Squadron markings and the individual code letter, both sides of the fuselage, Trainer Yellow outlined Indian Red. The YZ was to the left of the roundel on both sides. The Squadron letters above and below the fixed tailplane were 'Trainer Yellow' only." [He had earlier explained that merely outlining the red codes in yellow still did not make them sufficiently visible visible so the colours were reversed to yellow outlined red: no date given for the change.]

So there you are: a trained artist, with a 30-year pedigree of interest in aircraft colours and with the avowed purpose of collecting data for a colour painting, visits an actual aircraft in the field with field cards based on MAP colour charts and gives you his detailed findings. What more could anyone want? Perhaps if he'd been a High Court judge or Archbishop as well? Personally I find such testimony, however implausible it may sound, hard to discount. But others are perfectly entitled to apply normative logic 60 years after the event and say the aircraft ought to have been in DE/DG/MSG and that from the photos they appear to be so finished. If I wanted to apply logic to support Moore's findings, I could note that he says earlier that, with the Grand Slam Lancasters' armament reduced to just the tail turret, it was the responsbility of KC-coded Lancasters to afford such protection as they could. That would explain the distinctive YZ codes and the emphasis on making them visible: using LE and LG on the upper surfaces might, rpt might [my speculation] might have been a way of making Grand Slam Lancasters more immediately distinguishable from above. To which it might reasonably be objected that the colour difference between DE and LE and between DG and LG was pretty marginal and that, on the evidence of the B+W photos, it didn't work very well.

NB also that Moore was viewing the aircraft in 1946, more than a year after the war had finished. OTOH the squadron was being disbanded so it's unlikely that too much effort had gone into repainting the aircaft recently.

And, in the interests of balance, somewhere in the depths of the Internet the former CO of a British Pacific Fleet Corsair squadron is almost foot-stompingly adamant that the codes on his squadron's aircraft were split either side of the roundel. All the photographic evidence to date suggests that he was wrong. Which is not quite the same things as saying he was wrong.

It's like all issues of faith: others can tell you their experiences and what they think but in the end no-one can make your mind up for you.

PS I have a Paragon Grand Slam conversion as well. Haven't built it yet: not sure what colours to paint it...

[Edited for typos.]

One item, in Moore's article, which is never mentioned, is that the Tallboy carriers, having more guns, were supposed to "protect" the Grand Slam aircraft. If those aircraft, viewed from above, are lighter in colour than usual, it makes them easier to see, especially as the Lancasters were spread over a wide area, in width and height; likewise, from below, a grey underside would also stand out against the other aircraft, when viewed from below.
Edgar

[Graham Boak]

There's also a discussion of this in (IIRC) Model Aircraft Monthly, with the suggestion that the aircraft were repainted in the lighter colours in 1946, for (or at the same time as) an exercise. From a modelling point of view it hardly matters, unless you specifically want to make the aircraft on a specific day. Talking of which, do we have a date for the taking of those photographs?

[speedbird]

That's exactly my point graham, I would really like to finish YZ-J as she might have been in the last weeks of the war but nothing in anything I have read or seen is conclusive proof she wore the LE LG OG scheme or indeed did any of 617s lancasters for that matter. I have no doubt in my mind that what Moore saw was correct but this was in 1946.

[The wooksta V2.0]

Take a best guess using all the info and just do it. Someone will say it's wrong, but it's YOUR model, and if they don't like it, tough!

MFM!

[Edgar]

In all this desperation to "prove" that Moore couldn't possibly have known what he was doing, I do find it intriguing that nobody ever asks why, while he was busy matching the colours, not a single member of the 617 Squadron personnel (some of whom saw wartime service) had the courtesy to come forward and tell him that the aircraft weren't painted in those colours in 1945. Rather cruel of them, wssn't it?

[Ivor Ramsden]

^{I have a copy of Vol 7 of "Aircraft of the Fighting Powers" at my side and the underside colour of the Lancasters in C Rupert Moore's painting looks awfully like Medium Sea Grey to me. Could it just be possible that he made an error when he was writing the article in which he referred to Ocean Grey?}

^{To answer Graham's question in post no.5, the pictures above were taken on 8th May 1945 according to the IWM from where they originate.}

^{I'll now don my tin hat and step back for a while .....}

Edited May 31, 2015 by Ivor Ramsden

[speedbird]

In the pictures above it is as plain as the nose on ones face that all the aircraft have the same upper camoflage colours. It can be assumed that the lanc nearest the camera is in the standard DE DG black scheme and comparing it to the two aircraft in the background I would say the colour tones on all three upper surfaces are the same meaning the two aircraft furthest from the camera can not possibly be LE LG on top... I would be interested on hearin the view of anyone on here who finished a grand slam lanc in the LE LG OG finish using the codes YZ- J and what made up their mind to use this scheme rather that that suggested in the airfix kit as I am still unsure which way to go to be honest.

[occa]

Notice what Nick says about reflectivity here:

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234964873-light-earth-light-green-versus-de-dg/?p=1696200

Would explain the high contrast between the green and the earth color in the photos above ^^

[Nick Millman]

The dark patch where the mid-upper turret was removed (?) is interesting, visible in all the photos. Fresh(er) Dark Green paint? But the re-painted sides do not appear so very different from the top. Was LG and LE chosen to re-paint the fuselage sides to better match the weathered upper surface paint?

FWIW I doubt very much that Dark Green and (especially) Dark Earth paint would have matched the original standards for those colours after a year of service and exposure.

The disparity in proportionate reflectivity between DG/DE and LG/LE remains a puzzle.

Nick

[MilneBay]

Looking at the pics in Troy's post at #4 I see no difference in the tone of the upper camo between the Lancaster in the standard finish and the other two with the later light grey (I assume MSG underside). If at some time after those pics were taken DE and DG were experimentally replaced with their lighter toned counterparts LE and LG then I see no problem that cannot be solved with a bit of adventurous modeling.

[speedbird]

Well it don't really matter now guys. I have applied the first coat of light earth now so no turning back lol

[noelh]

I bought the 'Giant Warplanes' die cast collection part work of the famous 617 YZ-J and it's unapologetically in LG LE and MSN. Although maybe the LG is closer to DG on the model. But they could be right looking at the pics.

On the other hand maybe fresh paint appears lighter.

Edited May 31, 2015 by noelh

[Edgar]

Assuming that the underside colour on "B" & "J" in the top photo is Medium Sea Grey, it was 21-2-45 before H.Q., 5 Group got permission for 617 to use that colour, so that photo post-dates that.

The first Grand Slam was dropped 14-3-45, the bomb was cleared for use 22-3-45, and the last one was dropped 19-4-45.

"J" was the C.O. Fauquier's aircraft, and dropped Grand Slams 19/3, 21/3, 23/3, 27/3, 9/4.

[mhaselden]

The photos in Post #4 are very interesting but bear in mind they are taken in very bright sunlight. Note the tone of the red roundel centres and the red of the code letters. My suspicion is that the "high contrast" noted on the camouflage is merely a reflection of unusually bright sunlight above the clouds compared to what we're used to seeing from photos taken on the ground. Like one of the earlier posters, I can detect no substantive difference between the upper surface camo on the 617 Sqn "specials" and that on 'KC-B' and 'KC-M' which both wear the regular night bomber finish. Also note the final pic of 'YZ-J' looks (to my MkI Eyeball) far more like the normal contrast we see on DE/DG airframes...but it's darker across the board, as seen particularly in the darker relative tone of the roundel red centres compared to the other shots. Based on these photos alone (and I respect others who may have more insights and additional data), I'd tend to go with standard DE/DG for the upper surfaces.