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Interesting color photo SEAC Mossie


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Seems the recognition bands were roundel blue here not black, spinners likely the same.

Also notice one of the drop tanks is in Foliage Green.

Photo and caption taken from Etienne Dub's photo stream:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/8270787@N07/sets/72157605269786717

SEAC Mosquito, 1945.

Mosquito XVI NS787-M,of No 684 Sqn. based at Alipore, India March 1945.

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Now that you mention it, I see black tail and hori stab bands (compare them to the fin flash) but dark blue wing bands. I was also under the impression that the underwing tank was PRU Blue, however I’m now seeing shades of Foliage Green instead! The inner roundel colour seems to be white, rather than light blue (like the fin flash) and both letter M and serial colour have me scratching my head! 
Cheers.. Dave 

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5 hours ago, Rabbit Leader said:

Now that you mention it, I see black tail and hori stab bands (compare them to the fin flash) but dark blue wing bands. I was also under the impression that the underwing tank was PRU Blue, however I’m now seeing shades of Foliage Green instead! The inner roundel colour seems to be white, rather than light blue (like the fin flash) and both letter M and serial colour have me scratching my head! 
Cheers.. Dave 

I tried to lighten up the pic and for me it reveals the tail stripes are of the same blue hue as the fuselage roundel and distinctly different from the dark grey of the prop blades.

Wasn't there a thread here before where either LDS or someone else from down under stated the bands were dark blue ?
Of course I could always confuse this with something else ......

 

 

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Nice picture, thanks for sharing.

Stripes were ordered to be blue for non-camouflaged aircraft by HQ ACSEA in Jan. 1945, so no surprise here. 

Foliage green however is highly unlikely anywhere on an India based aircraft. It was an RAAF colour and with no RAAF unit in India I can't see how this could have been available.

Edited by Giorgio N
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15 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

Nice picture, thanks for sharing.

Stripes were ordered to be blue for non-camouflaged aircraft by HQ ACSEA in Jan. 1945, so no surprise here. 

Foliage green however is highly unlikely anywhere on an India based aircraft.

Ah see so my assumption was correct.

The sloppily applied paint on the drop tank resembles foliage green to my eye but it must not be the same color, also it seems that dark green is visible on the other half of the fuel tank. 
One can see it if the picture is enlarged.

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I've just found another rather blurred version of the same foto, obviously the one in my OP above was heavily retouched and 'improved' through photoshop, for example the drop tank colors are only visible by lots of imagination here so it appears they've been added.

Also the roundel centers appear to be light blue.
 

But the question arises if this is not a colorized foto per se which is a rather disappointing thought.

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Now that I can see the pictures on my PC, I'm starting to think the upper one has been touched up. There are a couple of spots that differ between the two pictures and are compatible with someone making a mistake while using an image processing software

This doesn't mean that the appearance of this machine would have differed in real life, as all the features are bog standard for the theatre and era: aluminum painted surfaces, dark and light blue SEAC roundels, dark blue id bands per regulation, black codes... nothing unusual.

The only doubt could be for the spinners, but dark blue has always been considered possible for these machines, The fuel tanks were supposed to be in the same aluminum but there would be nothing strange in the use of one that had not been repainted in this colour yet and therefore carried the original PRU Blue.

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