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Italian Spitfire Vb colours, markings, decent photo's.


modelling minion

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HI Guy's,

A friend of mine is building an Airfix 1/48 Spitfire Vb and is planning on finishing it as an Italian Co-belligerent Air Force one. He is having some bother being able to confirm the colours these aircraft were finished in (at the minute we are going with dark earth/mid stone uppers with azure unders). We know that the Italian Spits came from a couple of different sources (some RAF some Yugoslav) and that might mean varied camo schemes but we were hoping someone would have some good info/pictures to help out.

Many thanks in advance.

Craig.

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The vast majority of Italian Spitfire Vs were in day fighter scheme. This was applied at MU level and as a result the camouflage didn't always follow the official scheme very well and the colors didn't always look as they should.

The presence of aircrafts in desert scheme can't be ruled out but these would have been an exception, and considering the operating theatre (the Balkans and the Adriatic sea) would have had little value as camouflage.

There are a number of images at eaf51.org, I'll post a link to the correct page later (replying from mobile now).

I should also add that only a few Vb were used, the majority being Vc.

An Italian company issued a decal sheet a couple years ago, I recall this being discussed on this forum too, may be worth searching here. This sheet was well researched and may be used as source of reference

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In reality the plot would have been simple if not for the misinterpretation of these aircraft colours that started in the '60s and was carried forward til very recently. All my old magazines mention the desert scheme but this was due to a bad understanding of the RAF colour regulations from many Italian researchers: as the aircrafts had served in MTO, then it was assumed that they were in desert scheme. The problem is that use in the MTO did not necessarily mean desert scheme and we now know how the RAF regulations changed over the years.

Around ten years ago things started tio change and I remember heated discussions on some Italian modelling forums on the colour of these aircrafts. As an avid reader of everything on the RAF and armed with information on RAF schemes from British sources (including this same forum) I was among the supporters of the use of DFS on these aircraft but the supporters of the desert scheme were very hard to convince. When Ferdinando D'Amico however found some footage of Italian aircrafts at the IWM, the fact that DFS was the common scheme became acknoweldged by almost everyone.

A number of stills from the film can be seen on the site mentioned above, linked here:

http://www.eaf51.org/

Go to Historic pics section and then select "51° Stormo ICAF - Italian Co-Belligerant Air Force - The Spitfires ".

The potential use of other schemes, including the TLS and maybe even the desert scheme, can not be discounted, however it would have been an exception. The pictures showing aircrafts with unusual bands and dark undersurfaces were taken after the war, these aircrafts would have been repainted and there are suggestions that would have been in overall green with sand bands on the uppersurfaces.

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