FAA Wildcat Underside Colours

[mick b]

Having just purchased the Xtradecal sheet ‘ Yanks with Roundels Part 2’ the instructions state that the Wildcat/Martlet schemes for two Mark V airframes in the areas of the Bay of Biscay and Ceylon both sport ANA Light Gray (sic) on the undersides. So when was this proposed as a possible option to what I always assumed was Sky?

 

Mike

[dogsbody]

It was the US equivalent to Sky.

 

 

 

Chris

[expositor]

Though some Martlet/Wildcat a/c may have had ANA 602 Light Grey undersurfaces, the standard was to be ANA 610 Sky.  

[Graham Boak]

I  would expect to see that more on a Mk.VI than a Mk.V, as the Grumman-built aircraft tended to remain in UK colours.  Or were some of the Mk.Vs built by Eastern?  (Temporarily away from my books...sorry.)

[Troy Smith]

16 hours ago, mick b said:

Xtradecal sheet ‘ Yanks with Roundels Part 2’ the instructions state that the Wildcat/Martlet schemes for two Mark V airframes in the areas of the Bay of Biscay and Ceylon both sport ANA Light Gray (sic) on the undersides. So when was this proposed as a possible option to what I always assumed was Sky?

 blinkin' Xtradecal..... likely to be cobblers....

 

AFAIK, Grumman used a US made but to MAP specification Sky, which were very close matches to British colours.

 

Eastern used substitute colors,  ANA 613  Olive Drab, ANA 603 Sea Gray and ANA 610 Sky, this was not a US color, but made for the British, but  is slightly lighter and 'cooler' than MAP Sky.

 

these are Wildcat V's in Ceylon as best can worked out (see comments)

FAA Grumman Martlet, Burma? by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

 

while the undersides are not clearly visible, the uppers are a good match for MAP colours,   by this the substitute colors for FAA aircraft were  ANA 613  Olive Drab, ANA 603 Sea Gray and ANA 610 Sky,  as seen on this Corsair.

Note that Olive Drab is darker than Sea Gray.

Vought Corsair F mk.1 by Etienne du Plessis, on Flickr

 

16 hours ago, dogsbody said:

It was the US equivalent to Sky.

ANA 602 Light Gray is not the US Sky equivalent, it's the early war overall Gray, and also known as "Grumman Gray" as they used up stock for internal paint jobs.

 

HTH

[Work In Progress]

1 hour ago, Graham Boak said:

I  would expect to see that more on a Mk.VI than a Mk.V, as the Grumman-built aircraft tended to remain in UK colours.  Or were some of the Mk.Vs built by Eastern?  (Temporarily away from my books...sorry.)

All Martlet V / Wildcat V were Eastern FM-1. None built by Grumman.

[alt-92]

2 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

Darn kids with their graffiti...

 

 

(good luck replicating that in 1/72 btw...)

[mick b]

Cheers for the feedback guys, as Troy says I thought it was the usual cobblers and if anything it was ANA 610. 

 

Mike

[Pete M.]

11 hours ago, alt-92 said:

Darn kids with their graffiti...

 

 

(good luck replicating that in 1/72 btw...)

That photo is my desktop screen background picture... 🙃

 

[Spec7]

At the risk of being flippant any shade of geeney yellowey bluey seems close

 

 

I gave up trying to match colours years ago and now just mix what looks right. As someone who was brought up in the 60's with the battle of Britain film  i see duck egg blue in a very pale form as looking right on the underside of home based RAF, anything SKY looks way to yellow/green. That said i think the unrestored aircraft in Cobham hall are a good pointer for FAA SKY

 

[Graham Boak]

I don't think that the BoB film should be taken as a definitive guide to wartime colours.  Like the battle itself, things were much more complicated than presented in an entertainment.

[Spec7]

I agree but it was only 20 years after the war and many people who worked on restoring and flying the planes would have been doing their war time job. As an old bloke now i have seen so many versions of paint colours over the years, all now gospel and a lot computer generated etc and they differ quite wildly. You can only now go on what we have and the older that ref, the closer to the time and personal memories you get. The SKY colour we have now is a relatively new thing, when i was building 1/72 airfix spits by the dozen in the 60's even the instructions called out Duck egg Blue very much like the BB film.

[Giorgio N]

18 minutes ago, Spec7 said:

I agree but it was only 20 years after the war and many people who worked on restoring and flying the planes would have been doing their war time job. As an old bloke now i have seen so many versions of paint colours over the years, all now gospel and a lot computer generated etc and they differ quite wildly. You can only now go on what we have and the older that ref, the closer to the time and personal memories you get. The SKY colour we have now is a relatively new thing, when i was building 1/72 airfix spits by the dozen in the 60's even the instructions called out Duck egg Blue very much like the BB film.

 

That general knowledge of these things 20 years after the war was better than today's is an assumption that may be based on logic but has been proven totally wrong many times when it comes to WW2 aircraft colours and schemes. This for the simple reason that particularly when it comes to model kit instructions, the research going into these things today is much deeper than it was in the '50s and '60s

The reality is that today we have exactly the same information that was potentially available in the '50s but today this information is considered important, while back then most didn't care that much. The information is the original from the era, contained in original documents, colour chips and so on. It was available in the '50s and has survived til today. And actually some information may be better available today as it would have been declassified while this may have not been true in the '50s. Researchers have checked chips, read orders and directives, analyzed wrecks, and have made this information available to enthusiasts in a way better than before.

Regarding MAP Sky, this is MAP sky according to the original specifications, it was like that 80 year ago and it's the same today. Whatever "new gospel" pops around are just interpretations from various paint companies, some may be closer and some may be less close to the original colour. But the nature of the original colour remains the same.. of course within the tolerances allowed by the original specifications. And with the caveat that the original colour may have been replaced by other colours for a brief time after its introduction, something that we know happened.

[Spec7]

Absolutely but you have to go with what you think looks right otherwise it will drive you mad every time you pass your model shelf and as every paint manufacturer has a different idea and 90% of colours on a screen/monitor will differ from those in the bottle what can you do ? Even spraying , brush painting , thinning and undercoats are going to effect the colour. Most people will do a google search as i did for US interior green and come up with every different green ever  invented, A lot of this is down to aircraft restorers as they are the colour pictures people use and they are all different, in researching my F6f i even found black interiors and   a very light grey interior..and green instrument panels and cockpit greens ranging  from almost fluorescent to olive drab

[alt-92]

2 hours ago, Spec7 said:

That said i think the unrestored aircraft in Cobham hall are a good pointer for FAA SKY

 

I know it wasn't your intention, but this is a good example on how artificial lighting affects perception of colour in photography.

Look at the tint differences in the cinderblock wall to spot how much the colour temperature of the FL lighting affects it.

[Troy Smith]

11 hours ago, Spec7 said:

anything SKY looks way to yellow/green.

Sky IS a yellow green.     The paint formula is known.  It has been posted here, white, yellow ochre and ultramarine IIRC. 

Sky is still a BS 381C colour.

https://www.e-paint.co.uk/BS381 Colourchart.asp

note is is part of the greens section, numbers start  2, not the blues, which start with 1.

9 hours ago, Spec7 said:

Absolutely but you have to go with what you think looks right otherwise it will drive you mad every time you pass your model shelf and as every paint manufacturer has a different idea and 90% of colours on a screen/monitor will differ from those in the bottle what can you do ?

 

Research.  To start with, search and ask here.   These questions, and answers, have been discussed here many times, like the linked Sky thread,  which is discussing MAP Sky and US made ANA 610 Sky, which are slightly different.

 

This a thread which was about how various paints match the RAF museum chip.

 

If you use enamel,  use Colourcoats.   Problem solved.   As for other companies...

Their boss, @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies is a modeller, and post here on a regular basis.

he has done primary research, making up paint sample to original formulas for RN paint.  Matches are made with a spectrometer. 

He is in contact with, and uses input from noted researchers on colour.  Now they are 'as new' matches,  but give you an accurate starting point 

we have other researchers here as members,  @Dana Bell has been writing books and digging through archives since the 1970's.  @Mike Starmer has been researching British armour colours for a long time, I saw his name crop up in model magazines in the mid 70's.

We sadly lost @Nick Millman as a contributor due to clashes with the hard of understanding,  Americans insisting that AVG P-40's have pale gray undersides for example... 

Nick has done work on British paint, and is perhaps the English speaking authority on WW2 Japanese colours.

 

This is cumulative knowledge, with a mass of information available, based on primary research available, that has been posted on here over the years.

 

So if you wish, It is possible to get advice on most WW2 aviation colour subjects here,  along with recommendations of model paint matches. 

 

Some companies are better than others in the matching,  but usually there is someone who can make recommendations in your preferred brand or type of paint.

This may of course result in a mix being the answer.

 

But if you can't finmd that information, and  you want to do some yourself, and your colour vision is good, get colour chips.

I now have the RAF Museum book with a chart of MAP colours, the Monogram Guide to painting Luftwaffe Aircraft, Monogram Guide to US Navy Colors (which has various chips relevant to the USAAF as well) a RAL fan deck and a FS 595B fandeck.

 

 

10 hours ago, Spec7 said:

The SKY colour we have now is a relatively new thing,

It's not.  There was a chip for it in one volume of Aircraft of the Fighting Powers,  which was published in the war and immediately afterwards.

Plus as it was the colour used for RAF code letters, spinners and the Sky band, it's hardly 'new' as there are plenty of Sky relics about.

It was also the colour used by the Fleet Air Arm until the late 50's. 

10 hours ago, Spec7 said:

when i was building 1/72 airfix spits by the dozen in the 60's even the instructions called out Duck egg Blue very much like the BB film.

 

The only Spitfire Airfix did in the 60's was the 72nd Mk.IX AFAIK, and that would have Medium Sea Grey undersides.  

an old header card. 

 

Actually the 60's was when people started to actually pay a bit more attention to these details.  If you want a time trip to what was commonly available, the Aircraft In Profile series

all of them are scanned here

https://boxartden.com/reference/gallery/index.php/Modeling-References/Aircraft-Profiles

 

Some of the profiles continue to haunt us today,  there are several in the Hurricane titles that turn up on decal sheets and models even now,  though no-one has seen the reference photos. 

for example,  this one

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234976286-hurricane-mk-iic-flown-by-km-kuttlewascher/

 

 

 

and these are some of the first really well researched and widely available books on the subject of RAF camouflage and markings.

https://boxartden.com/reference/gallery/index.php/Modeling-References/Camoflage-Markings

 

and still excellent primers today. 

 

10 hours ago, Spec7 said:

in researching my F6f i even found black interiors and   a very light grey interior..and green instrument panels and cockpit greens ranging  from almost fluorescent to olive drab

one of the problems with image searches, no context.   

 

If you ask here, you could find out what specs Grumman were working too. 

so...

Googles "britmodeller hellcat interior" 

 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235073912-interior-colour-of-a-grumman-f6f-hellcat-please/

  

On 23/05/2020 at 15:21, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat

Cockpit (First 100 aircraft) back to armour bulkhead behind seat – Bronze Green #9 (ACUS30)

 

Cockpit (rest of production) back to armour bulkhead behind seat – Interior Green ANA611  (ACUS09)

 

Engine Cowling, Fuselage Interior behind cockpit – Light Gray (ACUS01)

 

Wheel Bays ahead of rear spar – Interior Green ANA611 (ACUS09) with exterior colour overspray

 

Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat

Cockpit – Interior Green ANA611 (ACUS09)

 

Later aircraft with BuNo’s higher than around 80000 interior above consoles – Black (C02)

 

Rear Fuselage with rear windows – Light Gray (ACUS01)

 

Rear fuselage without rear windows – Usually Zinc Chromate Yellow (ACUS23)

 

Fuselage Interior (very late build numbers over 94000) – Interior Green ANA611 (ACUS09)

 

Inside of engine cowling – Possibly light gray (ACUS01) interior green ANA611 (ACUS09) or Zine Chromate Yellow (ACUS23)

 

which  may be of use on your next build.....?

 

Sorry if this sounds like a rant by a twonk, but there were some misconceptions in your posts and got carried away.....

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

21 hours ago, Spec7 said:

Absolutely but you have to go with what you think looks right

 

How does one know what to think looks right? You either know what looks right because you've got references to get to that point, or you work to an idea you like either based on a mental image from somewhere or from copying others. I suspect many are in the somewhat nebulous latter camp.

 

I'm not saying a modeller isn't at liberty to do exactly as they choose to do, but you either know what's right or you don't. Seeing some of the bizarre colour choices e.g. at RAF Cosford applied years hence I'm perhaps less inclined to presume widespread competence on the subject of WWII paint colours in the past. In fact I quite recently came into possession of another man's research files into a subject area I'm fond of dating back to 1989 to around 2001 and he was much more organized than I am with everything printed, filed and catalogued. Of course much of his correspondence then was by traditional letters back and forth. Some of the responses he received from published authors (and still today revered as authorities) to professional consultants paid handsomely for advice on colours for rather significant national museum level stuff make me rather angry actually in their blasé, non-methodical, unscientific and somewhat fabricated approach to things. I was staggered to learn two individuals whom I shall not name so long as they live admitted in letters that they were colourblind to some degree - people writing books and magazine articles and advising on paint colours to use for national treasures! 

 

I'm not sure if Stew was present with me at the time at the Scottish Nationals but I had a father & son duo over asking for an equivalent to Humbrol 30. Immediately suspicious, because it's a fairly useless colour, I clarified what the intended application was and, sure enough, it was for RAF aircraft. We discussed the subject of RAF Dark Green being quite firmly an olive of little ambiguity and it all ended up being a waste of time because in the dad's mind Humbrol 30 "just looked right", but only because he'd grown up with it and had never seen a real aircraft in the proper stuff.

 

I am always reminded of Blackadder and the episode discussing the Spanish Infanta's eyes being exactly the same shade of green as the Famous Stone of Galveston, with Percy confessing to have seen neither and Blackadder quipping, to paraphrase slightly:

 

"So something you have never seen is exactly the same colour as something else you've never seen"

 

As Troy says though, there is a huge amount of knowledge on tap on forums such as this though - stuff you'd scarcely dare believe could exist, however ask the question and sure enough someone will likely turn up with a relevant and structured answer complete with citations to references with some gravitas. It's a wonderful resource

[Spec7]

1 hour ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

 

How does one know what to think looks right? You either know what looks right because you've got references to get to that point, or you work to an idea you like either based on a mental image from somewhere or from copying others. I suspect many are in the somewhat nebulous latter camp.

 

I'm not saying a modeller isn't at liberty to do exactly as they choose to do, but you either know what's right or you don't. Seeing some of the bizarre colour choices e.g. at RAF Cosford applied years hence I'm perhaps less inclined to presume widespread competence on the subject of WWII paint colours in the past. In fact I quite recently came into possession of another man's research files into a subject area I'm fond of dating back to 1989 to around 2001 and he was much more organized than I am with everything printed, filed and catalogued. Of course much of his correspondence then was by traditional letters back and forth. Some of the responses he received from everyone to public authors and still today revered as authorities to professional consultants paid handsomely for advice on colours for rather significant national museum level stuff make me rather angry actually in their blasé, non-methodical, unscientific and somewhat fabricated approach to things. I was staggered to learn two individuals whom I shall not name so long as they live admitted in letters that they were colourblind to some degree - people writing books and magazine articles and advising on paint colours to use for national treasures! 

 

I'm not sure if Stew was present with me at the time at the Scottish Nationals but I had a father & son duo over asking for an equivalent to Humbrol 30. Immediately suspicious, because it's a fairly useless colour, I clarified what the intended application was and, sure enough, it was for RAF aircraft. We discussed the subject of RAF Dark Green being quite firmly an olive of little ambiguity and it all ended up being a waste of time because in the dad's mind Humbrol 30 "just looked right", but only because he'd grown up with it and had never seen a real aircraft in the proper stuff.

 

I am always reminded of Blackadder and the episode discussing the Spanish Infanta's eyes being exactly the same shade of green as the Famous Stone of Galveston, with Percy confessing to have seen neither and Blackadder quipping, to paraphrase slightly:

 

"So something you have never seen is exactly the same colour as something else you've never seen"

 

As Troy says though, there is a huge amount of knowledge on tap on forums such as this though - stuff you'd scarcely dare believe could exist, however ask the question and sure enough someone will likely turn up with a relevant and structured answer complete with citations to references with some gravitas. It's a wonderful resource

Well quite simply what looks right is what clicks with what you have seen as a reference in the past, i look at things like stills from the BofB film and thats what i see as looking right. The aircraft look right, the plastic electric doorbell on the cottage front door does not. One leaps of the screen at you, one  doesnt draw your attention as being wrong....I look at the FFA aircraft in Cobham hall and thats what i think looks right. You instinctively know what looks right to you as it doesn't leap out at you for looking wrong. You look at the almighty cockup that is the  invasion stripes on the typhoon in the RAF museum :)...now thats wrong  very wrong at it stands out ...

I do appreciate what you say, i restore  classic bikes and  when i see £150k restorations in completely the wrong shade  it makes me cringe but then i am also not stupid enough to see factory swatches as being correct either ( most changed with the advent of water based paints, faded over the years or were not really correct back in the day either) I have never built a model i would profess to be show standard  so colours only have to look right to me

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

That's exactly the second camp I described. Things don't look right - they look the way you expect them to because there's no other frame of reference. The 1969 Battle of Britain film is a perfect example - deep rooted in the back of my mind is the clear mental image of a two-stage Merlin Spitfire with 6-stack exhausts in green & brown and that Messerschmitts and Heinkels should have engines with high thrust lines, making real Messerschmitts and Heinkels look a bit weird to me. I wore out VHS tapes of that film as a child watching it over and over again. Similarly, Hurricanes and Spitfires should be duck egg blue underneath with large Type A roundels under the wings - but in real life these markings are far less common that one would think going by the Battle of Britain film. One must separate personal bias from fact-based research.

 

If for example your only frame of reference for the Mitsubishi Ki46 Dinah was the preserved example at Cosford, "right" would be a metallic mint green for all the interior parts and you'd instinctively know it was right because there was nothing to tell you it was something someone probably found in his shed in the 1970s. To use that as but one example, we know it's quite, quite wrong and entirely unlike what was originally there but you'd have to know that to know it was wrong.

 

I'm glad you brought up the word instinct though, because I believe it plays a big part in this, yet studies have shown time and time again that instinct or "gut feel" has not evolved in the slightest since the Mk.1 Chimpanze where instinct was there to tell you that a sabre toothed animal growling at you was something to be run away from to serve in lieu of having a copy of the Caveman's Encyclopedia of Dangerous Predators handy to look up, and is at very best useless in most aspects of modern human life. Instincts are to preserve life from immediate danger and tend to be counter productive and misleading in all other respects.

[Spec7]

I dont wish to be argumentative but you say "Things don't look right - they look the way you expect them to" but i say  "Things look right because they look the way you expect them too"

I dont believe there is any firm evidence of a colour., it probably varied from batch to batch, it very probably didn't match the swatch card, Even today with modern tech colour matching is really only as good as the guy that does it and some colours are lost simply because the methods are lost like leaded paints, cellulose and carcinogenic paints  like Zinc chromate.

Before i started my motorcycle business i worked for 34 years in the business developing a colour proofer and densitometer system for the print industry, for example a printing ink to a BS will produce different colours when printed on tin, card, paper, or plastic, not much good when your glossy leaflet colour doesnt match you retail paper bag colour and you are using the same can of ink..

My point is colours are not permanent, air, light, UV, humidity etc all work against them so the best we can do historically is take educated guesses. Personally i think if the Guy restoring his $2m USD F6F is happy with his cockpit then who am i to be unhappy with my £25.00 one

 

Be it Grey

 

Black

 

light Green

[/url]

 

in fact its very hard to find two the same... 🙂

 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I've seen these arguments from the position of incredulity before so you'll have to forgive me for losing interest fast - but it would be quite incorrect to assume that because you don't know that nobody could.

 

Few will profess to claim to know precisely what set of colour coordinates could be observed on any given item at any given point in time, but people who have done far more in-depth research that Google Image searches can make a credible statement that Paint X to within Tolerance Y was typical on Subject Z.

 

The fact you've found three different appearances of modern restorations of Hellcat prove nothing besides at least 2 of the owners not being too concerned about authenticity on their property.

 

If you think real Hellcats came out of Grumman's doors with every one painted to the whims of some craftsman with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth then to be blunt you don't understand how Grumman's assembly line and parts inventories worked.

[Spec7]

Ha ha no you completely miss the point

What i am saying is none of the restorations are probably correct but if it doesnt bother a £1m owner restoration its not going to bother  a £25 kit builder.

 

I know just how paint lines work thanks and even today you will not find a car repairer worth his salt that resprays a wing and expects it to match, he will respray a side and try and blend it in. I find it incredible that you think Ford back in the 30s/40s could produce batch after batch the same colour  when  Ford in 2020 cant. From what i have read they couldn't even match colours from factory to factory to the degree model makers are expected too today.

i have just resprayed my F6F cockpit parts again, 3rd time lucky and now i am 100% happy with them whether anyone else is 100% happy with them is not really my concern, i build for myself not others.

Not wanting to be to controversial but once this is finished it will end up in the bin, the fun for me is in the build, bit like a jigsaw, once its done i have no interest , i dont build models well enough to display them   I strongly advise you not to look at my build threads , As i said to Troy on my last build, "Hurricane aficionados look away now" .. 🙂

 

 

 

Not Grumman but if any one questions my paint finish i will tell them its been through he repair shop 🙂 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Your argument is all over the place. Are you talking about batch variance within a given specification of a particular paint or are you talking about something being black, green or grey? Are you talking about production lines or repair jobs because the approach is very different as is the affected area of the subject matter. A patch in a funny colour is entirely different to a whole new aeroplane rolling out of the production line in bright torquoise because "batch variance".

 

You're conflating a lot of separate issues and appear to arrive at the conclusion that anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's in all cases. That's patently not true. There is always an exception to prove the rule, and that is ANA613 Olive Drab, which is well documented to have been the worst controlled colour of WWII with no evidence of a single batch rejection. US bombers built in different locations before final assembly often did sport different shades of olive drab from new, but that's worth mentioning especially because the same is not automatically true for all other subjects and paints. 

 

Nobody minds what you do with your model aeroplanes - that's entirely your business and nobody is trying to force you to do anything different. That doesn't mean that some others don't have a pretty good idea what typical actually looked like based on much more in-depth academic and archival research that watching a film once.

 

A Ford customer would rightly be apoplectic if their new car had red wings, a silver roof, black doors and blue bumpers and be fobbed off by some cretin in the dealership with "it's never going to be an exact match" and that's because even setting aside that a car is built using the same batch, a showroom full of new "True Red" Fords made from different batches will all look ostensibly the same unless you start removing body panels and swapping them between cars and subjecting them to close inspection in natural light. Batch variance gives relatively small differences which are noticeable when juxtaposed together. That's quite different entirely from someone at the Ford factory mixing a batch of paint based upon a fond memory of the Miura at the start of The Italian Job and the end customer saying "I'm sure I ordered my 2020 Fiesta in True Red but this appears to be Rose Tinted Nostalgia Red". Ford Imperial Blue is a pretty colour that lots of Ford fans instantly recognise because until someone starts mixing and matching panels it looks the same. I have a mental image of Imperial Blue. I could not just start mixing Imperial Blue at my table right now without a reference though, because whilst without false modesty I am very good at mixing colours and my colour perception excellent, my eyes are not in fact spectrophotometers and even if they were, without a clear target beside me to refer to I'll end up absolutely miles off the mark.

 

The difference between working from mental images and true batch variance is akin to WWII night carpet bombing accuracy versus daylight precision bombing.

 

Your model, your choice, but there are folk out there who can lay their hands on something written down in black & white as to what "right" looks like, to within a fairly modest tolerance, and almost all of them are happy to share what they have if asked.

[Work In Progress]

On 7/15/2020 at 8:38 AM, Spec7 said:

I agree but it was only 20 years after the war and many people who worked on restoring and flying the planes would have been doing their war time job. As an old bloke now i have seen so many versions of paint colours over the years, all now gospel and a lot computer generated etc and they differ quite wildly. You can only now go on what we have and the older that ref, the closer to the time and personal memories you get. The SKY colour we have now is a relatively new thing, when i was building 1/72 airfix spits by the dozen in the 60's even the instructions called out Duck egg Blue very much like the BB film.

The filming absolutely did not attempt to match original colour schemes but to make the aeroplanes look good on screen factoring for the film stocks in use and the need to have things be clearly identifiable by a non-expert audience,. while looking "near enough" for the non-modelling, non-pilot, non-historian commercial audience not to care about the disparities. White codes, double-size rank insignia, and so on.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Work In Progress

[Work In Progress]

On 7/15/2020 at 8:38 AM, Spec7 said:

many people who worked on restoring and flying the planes would have been doing their war time job.

No, they really weren't. The identities of the people involved in the work, and who flew the aircraft for the filming, is not some eternal mystery, it was all extremely well documented at the time, and these are matters of fact rather than mythology. 

Edited July 16, 2020 by Work In Progress