Wg Cdr I R Gleed's Personal Codes

[SteveJM]

Afternoon all,

 

Anybody got a definitive (or reasonably close at least) answer as to what colour was used for I R Gleed's personal identification codes on Spitfire AB502? I've got two sets of decals to choose from - Italeri and Xtradecals. The former are quite clearly blue (the same shade as used for the roundels in the set), wheras the latter are several shades darker almost to the point of being black. The only colour illustration I've found of this particular aircraft is a painting on the cover of the SAM Spitfire Datafile (2nd Ed.) which show the codes as matching the roundels but this is only a painting and therefore subject to artistic interpretation. My gut instinct is that only one shade of blue would be likely to have been used for both codes and roundels but a second, or third or more, opinion would be most welcome.

 

Thanks

Steve

[Stew Dapple]

A Google image search for "Widge Gleed Spitfire Vb" gives a few pictures of the original aircraft and as far as can be seen the codes look to be the same shade as the roundel blue, fwiw.

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[SteveJM]

 

3 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

A Google image search for "Widge Gleed Spitfire Vb" gives a few pictures of the original aircraft and as far as can be seen the codes look to be the same shade as the roundel blue, fwiw.

 

Cheers,

 

Stew 

Thanks Stew,

 

That's what I thought but it's nice to have a bit of confirmation from another pair of eyes. Such a shame that colour photography was only in its infancy during WWII. Trying to interpret what a colour was (or wasn't) by looking at digitised, and most times compressed or otherwise manipulated, versions of 80 year old B/W film stock is a real can of worms - and I like to think I know a bit about colour reproduction having worked in a commercial print shop for 18 years!

 

Steve

[Troy Smith]

This will muddy the waters

 

I'd suggest the codes are blue, but a brighter blue, like the underside colour,  note in the first photo the letter tone is the same as the under cowling, perhaps the filter on the second picture has made all the blue tones dark.

 

 

One other detail, the wing commander pennant

 

This maybe worth a read as well

 

There are also examples of red codes with white outlines... 

HTH

[Stew Dapple]

That picture looks to have been taken at the same time as some of the others which show the codes as a dark shade matching the roundel blue - in fact it seems to be the only one showing a lighter shade so on a balance of probabilities I would suspect a photographic or development anomaly on that picture rather than the majority which show a darker tone.

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[rossm]

The pale tone of the red in the roundel in Troy's second photo suggests to me that a red filter was used - quite common in B+W photography to increase contrast in skies - which has the effect of darkening blues. Note also the shift in tone of the spinner relative to the codes between first and second pictures. The fact that codes and roundel blue show the same in the second photo is probably down to the red filter and (possibly) high contrast processing/printing rendering both as black.

 

I would look at the shades of the red in the other photos you have seen - are they all pale like the second photo? In which case they all probably were taken with a red filter. I'm not sure I can come up with such a reasonable explanation for the lighter tone of the codes in the first picture other than they really were paler than the roundel blue - as in the third photo.

[SteveJM]

Thanks for the replies gents. As I said earlier, determining correct colours at such a distance in time without the actual aircraft being available for inspection is such a can of worms. Truth is, we can (and do) debate this kind of thing endlessly on this site and others, and the depth of knowlege shown never ceases to amaze me, without ever coming to a 100% definitive answer. In this case I've decided to go with the Italeri sheet for the identification codes as they look the most right to my eyes. On the other hand, Xtradecals will win the day when it comes to the Wg Cdr pennant and (possibly) the serial numbers too.

 

As the wife never seems to tire of reminding me, I'm not building a museum quality replica but rather a reasonably decent 1/72 model that nobody else, bar the grandsons, is even remotely interested in so I should be more pragmatic...

 

...but what does she know? 🙄

 

Cheers,

Steve

[Stew Dapple]

Nothing wrong with wanting to make it as good as you can Steve

 

Hope you have a good build and that it turns out as well as you would hope,

 

Cheers,

 

Stew