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Western Desert RAF Colours - Kittyhawk 1a


fishplanebeer

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I'm now at the crucial stage of painting the upper surfaces of my SH Kittyhawk 1a so looking for some advice please in terms of the correct/best enamels to use for the mid-stone and dark earth having opted for Humbrol's 157 Azure Blue for the underside as this looks about right from colourised photos of the period, accepting these are not entirely reliable

 

My dilemma is that I have a number of brands in my paint stash that I could use as follows:

 

Dark Earth: Humbrol 29 : Xtracolor X002/BS450

 

Mid Stone: Humbrol 84 : Humbrol HB12 (very old tin) : Xtracolor X009 : Revell 16

 

On cursory inspection the Xtracolor looks best for Mid Stone and the Humbrol for the Dark Earth but would welcome some advice.

 

I know there are plenty more paint options out there that are acrylic but I only use enamels as they are what I've always used in the past and feel confident with given that this is my first model to get to this stage in many years so don't want to muck it up (hopefully not famous last words).

 

Regards

Colin.

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I won't comment on the Mid Stone because IMHO most available hobby paints are reasonably close, and in any case there was extensive fading in the desert. However, in the case of the Dark Earth, it's important to be aware that there were two DuPont colors both called Dark Earth: 71-009 and 71-035 (the latter for some reason sometimes identified as 71-065). The color you want is 71-009, which is the lighter and somewhat redder of the two. Here is a digital image of the two colors that I found and downloaded some time ago. I'm not sure, but it looks as if it was produced by Nick Millman.

 

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When I built my Kittyhawk Ia last year, I started with some USAF SEA tan FS30219 (I used Model Master enamel, but it's available from a lot of other manufacturers) and darkened it with a bit of OLD Pactra Roof Brown, which is probably impossible to find, but could probably be replicated by combining some burnt umber with some burnt sienna. I then faded it with some of the paint with more 30219 mixed in. FWIW, here's a photo of my model. The color balance is somewhat skewed toward red - the color on the actual model looks more like a lightened version of the chip - but it gives an idea of what I think is an appropriate contrast between the two shades.

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Hi 84 is not a good match for the wartime shade of Middle stone, note the difference in naming, it is confusing. I would expect HB12 to be about right, Humbrols modern shade for Middlestone is 225, to my eye it is too yellowish though it is a decent match to the chips in the RAF museum book, I like Hu 94, I think Revell 16 should be Ok too as should the Extracolor shade though I have no experience with those last two.

Steve 

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3 hours ago, fishplanebeer said:

My dilemma is that I have a number of brands in my paint stash that I could use as follows:

 

Dark Earth: Humbrol 29 : Xtracolor X002/BS450

 

DuPont 71-009 is lighter in colour than Humbrol 29

The DuPont Colour is actually an Orange based colour, which you can see from

this Swatch off an RNZAF P40E-1 (from British Contract)

1bb81a7e-cc23-45ec-9e28-73314c0ea918.jpg

 

 

Just as an aside, we have here in New Zealand a original RNZAF P40E-1 in original Dupont colours

(interior/Exterior) that has been in storage for 6-7 decades, and the DuPont Dark Earth,

shows some interesting fading from Original colour to a lightened colour similar to

to adding white to Hu 29 (your choice :thumbsup:)

 

Regards

 

Alan

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On 11/20/2020 at 9:20 PM, LDSModeller said:

 

DuPont 71-009 is lighter in colour than Humbrol 29

The DuPont Colour is actually an Orange based colour, which you can see from

this Swatch off an RNZAF P40E-1 (from British Contract)

1bb81a7e-cc23-45ec-9e28-73314c0ea918.jpg

 

 

Just as an aside, we have here in New Zealand a original RNZAF P40E-1 in original Dupont colours

(interior/Exterior) that has been in storage for 6-7 decades, and the DuPont Dark Earth,

shows some interesting fading from Original colour to a lightened colour similar to

to adding white to Hu 29 (your choice :thumbsup:)

 

Regards

 

Alan

you can't compare the dark earth 71-009 used for temperate land scheme(009/013) with the dark earth 71-035 used for desert scheme(035/069)

these paints were applied at factory on E-1 and K

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1 hour ago, BS_w said:

you can't compare the dark earth 71-009 used for temperate land scheme(009/013) with the dark earth 71-035 used for desert scheme(035/069)

these paints were applied at factory on E-1 and K

Yeah from countless color photos one indeed can conclude that the US (normally) used different colors for dark earth depending on the scheme especially if they were painted in the factories.
There's a famous photo of two Baltimores in Italy one with TLS and the other in Desert Scheme.

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Hi Colin,

 

I've experimented a bit with trying to get a good combination of colours for Desert Scheme. Putting aside the issue of export colours from the US, I've found the Sovereign Colourcoats set for them to match the RAF Museum colour chips pretty closely. Previously, I found the Model Master paints (which are now no longer available in Australia) were the next best matching paints. I've found Dark Earth from a number of companies including Humbrol to be close to the mark and I've used the Testors Dark Earth for Export schemes in the past. The paints I've found that haven't been a good match for Mid Stone are the old Gunze colour and the original HB12 Mid Stone (too dark and not yellow enough) though the latter is pretty theoretical as it hasn't been available for decades - I just happened to have an old can lying around.

 

Cheers

 

Michael

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