Most Common RAF Underside Colour - Battle of Britain

[prosser]

20 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

Squadron codes were introduced around he time of the Munich crisis, and were standard before the war, with the codes used prewar being altered to the wartime codes.  It was intended  that fresh codes would be issued at intervals, but this rarely occurred and never on a service-wide basis to the end of the system.  It seems a very few squadrons missed the instruction, and continued using their prewar codes for some months, leading to at least one duplication.  A unit in 1940 without using its allocated codes was doing its own thing, for unspecified reasons.  I believe you are thinking mainly of 73 Sq. - the photo in Fighter Pilot of such an aircraft shows a 73 Sq aircraft despite the claim in the caption.  (See Peter Cornwell's The Battle of France for confirmation of that.)  Presumably the publishers of Fighter PIlot had limited access to photographs of Hurricanes in France.  Other aircraft of 73 Sq at this time are seen with their full code set.

Graham

Thanks for your comments.  I have to confess that the reference to the underside colour issue is in a more modern edition of Fighter Pilot I have - I had assumed it was in my older version, but having checked it isn't - so I guess this comment succumbed to the censor in the 1941 edition!!  

Martyn

[Graham Boak]

Without checking, I believe it is in my Arrow paperback edition from the 50s.

[gingerbob]

2 hours ago, prosser said:

I have to confess that the reference to the underside colour issue is in a more modern edition of Fighter Pilot I have - I had assumed it was in my older version, but having checked it isn't - so I guess this comment succumbed to the censor in the 1941 edition!! 

 

Now that's interesting!  When I first read your comment about Richey's explanation (squadron initiative) I was skeptical, because it sounded like the sort of "logical deduction" someone would make to explain an observed change, without knowing what was going on behind the scenes (adding in a slight error of timing).  But the implication that the book was essentially from a contemporaneous journal made me hold back.  If the statement crept in later, though, that raises all sorts of questions- had it been censored, and Richey was later able to restore it, or did some other person add it, and on what basis, for what reason?

 

I find it very unlikely that an individual squadron would do something as fundamental as completely change the underside paint scheme (of all the squadron aircraft?) on their own initiative, and without the blessing of "the Ministry", or at least the local authority.  That it allegedly happened shortly before the official change also makes me suspicious.  Frankly it smacks of the usual "Oh, the government was hopeless, but thanks to our private venture..." attitude that is so popular in British WWII history.

[mhaselden]

One has to ask, where did the paint come from for such a squadron-centric change, particularly a forward-deployed squadron away from home?  Prior to the widespread use of Sky, fighter squadrons simply didn't have access to large quantities of Sky or pale blue paints.  

 

I suppose 1 Sqn could have scrounged the paint from a Blenheim base or fron French sources.  However, it's still a stretch to think that a CO would unilaterally make such a change due to the risk of friendly fire from misidentification.

[Graham Boak]

The Blenheims were painted underneath in Sky, or a reasonably close predecessor.  So an appropriate paint was available in France from RAF sources.  However, equally it doesn't seem grossly unlikely that a comparatively few gallons of Gris Bleu Clair could have been obtained from French sources.  The French even had, perhaps still have, a phrase for such methods: "Systeme D".  It wouldn't get into official records.  After all, the value of the black/white undersides was in its identification value for the Observer Corps in the UK, and it had much less purpose in French skies.  It is perhaps wondering whether the possibilities of damage from friendly fire was reduced or increased, given that the majority of friendly fighters in the area were French with blue undersides...

 

Which is not intended to suggest that the AM could not have been aware of it, and even complicit.  Now the suggestion has been made, it makes much sense.  What makes less sense is that it only appears in 1 Sq.  It would be more likely to have also been seen in (at least) 73 Sq. as well.  There's quite a lot about 73 Sq in Peter Cornwell's Then and Now: The Battle of France, but nothing I recall about underside light blue.

 

There is a similar story in Fighter Pilot about pilot armour plate, where Hanks is supposed to have borrowed from a Battle squadron and modified to fit Hurricanes.  You can just about see that for a single example, but from a friend's personal experience,  machining armour plate is not something easily done.  Less obvious is where a whole squadron's worth can have come from.  Unless you know, as we do, that this was something Dowding had authorised before the war, but it was only now that production quantities were arriving.  It's amazing, but the closer you read history, the less stupid and unprepared the "government" were.  But that doesn't make such a good story.

Edited October 11, 2018 by Graham Boak