RAF PRU Pink?

[Peter Roberts]

The 16 Sqn ORB records a deal of scepticism when the first 'pink' PR Spitfires were delivered, until they trialled one against a PRU Blue Spitfire at dusk and saw for themselves how effective the pink was at concealing the aircraft versus the PRU Blue.

 

I have always smiled at the thought of men saying how they went to war in a pink Spitfire....

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by Peter Roberts

[Patrick Martin]

Back in the early eighties, during a lunch I sat a couple seats away from a elderly former PRU Spitfire pilot who was having a conversation with others at the table about PRU Pink.  I did not catch all of it, but the the drift was towards those making 'exact colours' comments.  He silenced one by stating 'we went down to a local garage bought our own paint to mix'.  This could have been early days but it goes to show, like 'sky', you can write books on colour topics and still not every get to the bottom....  I wish I had listened to the rest or asked him about it after, but those around me drowned him out with talk of Voodoo and Phantom speeds close to the deck.  Groan 

Pat Martin

[Troy Smith]

1 hour ago, Patrick Martin said:

He silenced one by stating 'we went down to a local garage bought our own paint to mix'.  This could have been early days but it goes to show, like 'sky', you can write books on colour topics and still not every get to the bottom....

Except.... you don't just slap car paint on a very expensive piece of cutting edge equipment.   If he was ground crew,  then he'd have been worth asking, pilots are notoriously unreliable on paint  with rare exceptions. 

Note the image from the ORB posted by @Dave Fleming  which detail paint to be supplied by Titanine,  a specialist paint maker to a specified standard, D.T.D. 63A, which IIRC is type of paint. 

 

The PRU units undoubtedly did mix up paint for experiments, but it wasn't just any old paint..... it was aircraft paint.  

But, it would have certainly been interesting to have question the gentleman further...and ask if he had an photos!

 

I can think of very few examples of documented use of non aircraft specific paint I have read about,  Israel in 1948 is one, though even this may have been leftover RAF paint,   Egyptian jets hastily camouflaged with car paint from the car factories at Helwan after the shock of the six day war in 1967,  and some in field camouflage of MiG-21 and Su-7 in the India Pakistan war with household paint are the only ones I can think of.   

[Peter Roberts]

I have heard, a long time back, from a highly credentialed researcher that some RAAF P-40’s (the first batch?) had the ‘USAF’ under the wings painted out with a paint mix from a local hardware. Perhaps because there was no existing similar colour in RAAF stores?

 

As Troy and others have posted here, the prescribed paint was always preferred but it seems there are (rare) exceptions under extreme circumstances.

[dragonlanceHR]

There is a confirmed story of a captured Ju-52 flying wounded partisans from Nis to Belgrade in 1944. The paint used to hastily paint red stars over nazi crosses peeled mid-flight almost causing the plane to be shot down. So it's not "any paint will do".

[Graham Boak]

To be fair, that could have been due to inadequate cleaning before painting, or not being quite dry.  It is worth remembering that personal markings were rarely painted in the official paints.  However the proper paints were not chosen just for adhesion but small pigment size for low drag, colour fastness (as much as possible) and other reasons.  

 

These stories do go on.  At the time of the Falklands War I was told that the Vulcan's underside as painted with tins of Dulux dark grey bought in the local Woolworths.  Considering that the person who told me this went on to become Chief Aerodynamicist, I can only hope that someone gave him a proper briefing on drag matters at some stage.  People just like good stories, particularly those who show the "little man" getting one over on "those who know better".

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

There are believably complete anecdotes of "locally procured" paint in use - and US 8th AAF Mustangs spring to mind where locally sourced red paint was acquired to paint the spinners. The tale is credible because it went to some detail about the difficulty achieving coverage, the translucent final appearance and the fact that it peeled off in sheets very quickly in service to be replaced with the correct stuff.

[Dave Fleming]

13 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

These stories do go on.  At the time of the Falklands War I was told that the Vulcan's underside as painted with tins of Dulux dark grey bought in the local Woolworths.  Considering that the person who told me this went on to become Chief Aerodynamicist, I can only hope that someone gave him a proper briefing on drag matters at some stage.  People just like good stories, particularly those who show the "little man" getting one over on "those who know better".

I'd heard 'applied by rollers bought at the local B&Q', which just slightly more plausible. 

It may happen - when the USMC first took the AV-8B onboard a ship (VMA-331 on USS Bellau Wood) they found the paint on the composite surafces started to peel away (Nose, intakes, leading edges) so they were touched up at Subic bay with what an eye witness described as 'tank paint',

 

https://nara.getarchive.net/media/a-pair-of-marine-corps-av-8b-harrier-ii-aircraft-are-parked-on-the-flight-deck-b86581

 

And when 41 Squadron painted the tail of their anniversary GR7/9, they used what's claimed to be a BMW pearlescent white

Edited April 7, 2022 by Dave Fleming

[Giorgio N]

Ah the good old "we got paint from the local hardware store" story...

It is amazing how Maintanance Units and similar establishments, that were the units that generally performed the repaints, were always short on paint while at the same time hardware stores never seemed to have problems in having paint available (although of course not necessarily the exact paint for that scheme). And all this in economies fully geared for war, where companies all over the Country had switched production from their previous peacetime goods to whatever could be useful to sustain the war effort...

And yet, no paint available at MUs, but plenty at the local hardware store, so much that a squadron commander could pop in, get whatever was needed for a dozen Spitfire, load this on a truck and go back to base to have his unit's aircraft repainted.... all much faster and more effective than ordering the correct paint through the logistic chain using the relevant catalogue stores numbers and so on... or even worse, receive newly painted aircraft from the MU or depot responsible for this

Edited April 7, 2022 by Giorgio N

[Giorgio N]

On 4/6/2022 at 12:30 AM, Peter Roberts said:

The 16 Sqn ORB records a deal of scepticism when the first 'pink' PR Spitfires were delivered, until they trialled one against a PRU Blue Spitfire at dusk and saw for themselves how effective the pink was at concealing the aircraft versus the PRU Blue.

 

I have always smiled at the thought of men saying how they went to war in a pink Spitfire....

 

 

So this means that those famous pink aircraft were delivered to 16 Sqn already in pink, painted by some other establishment.. probably an MU.. so they didn't have to paint the aircraft themselves with locally sourced paints...

 

Of course I'm joking here, this was the standard practice so no surprise. Clearly having to tell about flying a pink aircraft remains quite funny 🙂

 

[Ed Russell]

Interestingly the more-or-less believable stories usually include the unsuitablility of the paint and the probably bogus ones don't. I would say the latter are by far the majority. I would discount virtually any that involved pilots or modern-day researchers' interpretations and most of those that involved ground crew. A documented-at-the-time story from someone from an actual maintenance unit is probably genuine.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

49 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

Ah the good old "we got paint from the local hardware store" story...

It is amazing how Maintanance Units and similar establishments, that were the units that generally performed the repaints, were always short on paint while at the same time hardware stores never seemed to have problems in having paint available (although of course not necessarily the exact paint for that scheme). And all this in economies fully geared for war, where companies all over the Country had switched production from their previous peacetime goods to whatever could be useful to sustain the war effort...

And yet, no paint available at MUs, but plenty at the local hardware store, so much that a squadron commander could pop in, get whatever was needed for a dozen Spitfire, load this on a truck and go back to base to have his unit's aircraft repainted.... all much faster and more effective than ordering the correct paint through the logistic chain using the relevant catalogue stores numbers and so on... or even worse, receive newly painted aircraft from the MU or depot responsible for this

 

The same argument is often made about warships. By the logic of some people, it's more credible that some plucky "make-do" sailor found enough paint for a 600 foot long cruiser at a local hardware shop in Alexandria than it is that the required volumes of paint came through military logistics.

[Blimpyboy]

Apologies in advance, for the thread creep...

 

With regard to paints not specifically designed for use on aircraft, this page has a good story about Swedish Air Force Viggen 'Blå Petter': https://www.ipmsstockholm.se/home/saab-ja-37-viggen-bla-petter/.

It states "The colors that were used came from an civilian paint manufacturer, and the blue colour is of water-based variety. That means that the aircraft can only fly in good weather. Operation in harsh weather conditions could wash the finish away."

 

As to how the paint was applied:

 

Admittedly, the paint selected for this aircraft was for a very time/space-specific usage.

This example doesn't prove that such actions occur regularly, or in large scale examples, but it goes to show that, for every rule...

 

 

 

As to the question of using pink for camouflage purposes, here's one of Australia's 'AusCam' patterns, for desert/arid terrain:

 

 

 

Never mind the German lozenge camouflage:

http://armahobbynews.pl/wp-content/uploads/Fokker-dol.jpg

 

And, because they have flair, there's a French example:

https://preview.redd.it/zn4tpga01z051.png?width=860&format=png&auto=webp&s=db6ea5ce64bfe73b3b28f7ceded9ff14cfb5dc15

and

https://img.over-blog-kiwi.com/0/64/42/44/20171011/ob_dca23c_ob-7dc64f-miiic-vol.jpg.

 

Plus, there are the SAS' 'pink panthers'!

 

 

 

 

Sorry again for the diversion, now, back to your scheduled programme...

 

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Blimpyboy

[Giorgio N]

1 hour ago, Blimpyboy said:

Apologies in advance, for the thread creep...

 

With regard to paints not specifically designed for use on aircraft, this page has a good story about Swedish Air Force Viggen 'Blå Petter': https://www.ipmsstockholm.se/home/saab-ja-37-viggen-bla-petter/.

It states "The colors that were used came from an civilian paint manufacturer, and the blue colour is of water-based variety. That means that the aircraft can only fly in good weather. Operation in harsh weather conditions could wash the finish away."

 

As to how the paint was applied:

 

Admittedly, the paint selected for this aircraft was for a very time/space-specific usage.

This example doesn't prove that such actions occur regularly, or in large scale examples, but it goes to show that, for every rule...

 

 

There have been a number of similar exceptions and I'm sure others may pop in this thread... however it is important to consider a few things.. or actually mainly one thing: the main role of paint on an aircraft is corrosion prevention !!!

This is and has been for many years the most important reason for painting an aircraft, way before the need for camouflage. Unprotected aluminum alloy can suffer from corrosion and this has to be prevented in whatever possible way to guarantee the structural integrity of an aircraft over the years. It is true that there have been times when this requirement was relaxed in return for a faster production (like in WW2 USA) but the fact remains that unpainted aircraft have always been relatively rare in history.

Aircraft specific paints are tested, among the other things, for their effect in terms not only of preventing corrosion but also to verify any negative effect of the paint itself on the materials they have to cover. Applying whatever paint is a risk that may be worth running in certain wartime conditions but not something very useful in peacetime.

 

Bla Petter is one of those cases where the paint used was not particularly important, for the simple reason that this was an airframe at the end of its life and was bound to be retired after having received the scheme. It didn't matter at point if the paint could not provide the protection required by the specifications, that aircraft history with the Aiur Force was over anyway. The airframe that received the blue scheme was specifically selected for this reason.

The same occurred with many other aircraft receiving special retirement schemes (like the well known "Ferrari" F-104) and even when an aircraft remain in service, often the ones receiving special schemes are chosen because they are very close to a periodical inspection, so that the paint is removed soon after as part of the programmed maintenance regimen.

[Phoenix44]

I always find these claims unlikely. An aviation unit can get the right fuel, spare parts, ammo, tyres oxygen, lubricating oils, coolants, control cables, bombs, red dope...but can't get a tin of red paint? The stores officer hasn't ordered ahead because that's his job? It's also why I find these claims about say German units using say Italian paints. Why wouldn't they have German paints of they've got all thd other myriad stuff they need?

[Troy Smith]

2 minutes ago, Phoenix44 said:

It's also why I find these claims about say German units using say Italian paints. Why wouldn't they have German paints of they've got all thd other myriad stuff they need?

That is specifically about the Luftwaffe getting involved in North Africa, at short notice,  the suggestions was for the use of Italian aviation paint, not just any old paint,  as the Luftwaffe didn't at the time have tropical paint colours, ( note they are RLM78/79/80 in the paint sequence,)   and the Italians had suitable paint colours as they needed them for the environment.   Given that  colour photos of  European finished Luftwaffe planes in North Africa stick out like a sore thumb,  you can see why some paint may have been borrowed initially.  

I can't remember if this has also been discredited as idea now as well,  but IIRC there were two shades of sand and two of green used. 

 

The use of another countries aviation paint when  no suitable paint is available, for example the USAAF using RAF aircraft paint in 1944/45  is not the same as using any old paint though.  

[Graham Boak]

The whole story about using Italian paints was suggested by Ken Merrick as an explanation for the early colours, which did not appear in the RLM standards of the appropriate time (which is why an explanation was needed.).  It appeared in his book Germany Aircraft Markings for Ian Allan after parting from Kookaburra after their first volume.   It was then repeated until it became gospel.  It may also be in Kookaburra's 2nf volume.  Some decades later he found the full description of these colours, which were an early German attempt at finding suitable colours.  The aircraft were painted in these colours in Germany before being sent, via Italy, to North Africa.  This is recounted, with chips, in his books for Classic in the early 200x.  Quite why or by whom it was decided that different colours were required is not recorded, AFAIK.  Or just forgotten....

 

There were two shades of sand and of the underside blue, but not of the green.  There was not however any suggestion of using non-aviation paint.  The colour(s) used by the Afrika Korps were different.  As the Regia Aeronautica had four different shades of the camouflage Yellow, it is perhaps unsurprising that no account has ever suggested just which one was "borrowed".  I've no idea what exact colour the Italian Army used on North Africa.  I don't have any of the Italeri vehicles to see what colour they recommend - perhaps someone with one of these or the new IBG Lancia trucks might chip in here.  Of course, we all know about the colours recommended by model companies....

[Jazzie]

11 hours ago, Dave Fleming said:

I'd heard 'applied by rollers bought at the local B&Q', which just slightly more plausible. 

It may happen - when the USMC first took the AV-8B onboard a ship (VMA-331 on USS Bellau Wood) they found the paint on the composite surafces started to peel away (Nose, intakes, leading edges) so they were touched up at Subic bay with what an eye witness described as 'tank paint',

 

https://nara.getarchive.net/media/a-pair-of-marine-corps-av-8b-harrier-ii-aircraft-are-parked-on-the-flight-deck-b86581

 

And when 41 Squadron painted the tail of their anniversary GR7/9, they used what's claimed to be a BMW pearlescent white

To be fair to the 41 sqn guys who painted more than just the Harrier with their special tails, they were using an auto paint that is so far removed from past technologies that there is very little difference to aviation paints these days. Im sure they also spent 95% of their effort into the preparation with their schemes wearing well through their service, unlike the Belgian Tiger F-16 that stripped its special scheme within days that nearly caused it to crash!

 

I note the earlier comments about stores getting to the right places, but dont think paint would have been a top priority and make do and mend while listening to "dont you know there is a war on!" comes to mind. I would expect in this case that an amount of "special" mixes would be created to find the right shade which would then be batch produced under a UOR order.  Not even these days do 2 batches come out the same!

[Phoenix44]

6 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

That is specifically about the Luftwaffe getting involved in North Africa, at short notice,  the suggestions was for the use of Italian aviation paint, not just any old paint,  as the Luftwaffe didn't at the time have tropical paint colours, ( note they are RLM78/79/80 in the paint sequence,)   and the Italians had suitable paint colours as they needed them for the environment.   Given that  colour photos of  European finished Luftwaffe planes in North Africa stick out like a sore thumb,  you can see why some paint may have been borrowed initially.  

I can't remember if this has also been discredited as idea now as well,  but IIRC there were two shades of sand and two of green used. 

 

The use of another countries aviation paint when  no suitable paint is available, for example the USAAF using RAF aircraft paint in 1944/45  is not the same as using any old paint though.  

On another forum it's being suggested that Luftwaffe units in northern Italy used Italian paints, hence my reference. As you say, there was probably some occasions where an interim paint was relatively urgently required and so might have been acquired from a friendly source but it seems to be becoming a default argument rather than the exception.

[Phoenix44]

32 minutes ago, Jazzie said:

To be fair to the 41 sqn guys who painted more than just the Harrier with their special tails, they were using an auto paint that is so far removed from past technologies that there is very little difference to aviation paints these days. Im sure they also spent 95% of their effort into the preparation with their schemes wearing well through their service, unlike the Belgian Tiger F-16 that stripped its special scheme within days that nearly caused it to crash!

 

I note the earlier comments about stores getting to the right places, but dont think paint would have been a top priority and make do and mend while listening to "dont you know there is a war on!" comes to mind. I would expect in this case that an amount of "special" mixes would be created to find the right shade which would then be batch produced under a UOR order.  Not even these days do 2 batches come out the same!

But paint is a priority, both for camouflage and corrosion control. Huge efforts went into paint and camouflage, both in terms of composition and colour. It makes little sense to go through all of that and then to not provide MUs and operational units with proper stocks.

[Troy Smith]

41 minutes ago, Jazzie said:

 

I note the earlier comments about stores getting to the right places, but dont think paint would have been a top priority and make do and mend while listening to "dont you know there is a war on!" comes to mind.

As suggested, why would paint not have been important?  

Why would paint, as stated both for concealment and corrosion control not be part of the supply chain? 

 

It was also during WW2  made in vast quantities. 

 

In one of @Mike Starmer  books on armour camouflage he points out that alone required 8,000 TONS of paint a year.   That's the army, not the airforce or navy.  

 

It was a massive amount of materials and time.   This is one of the reasons the USAAF dropped camouflage and as much painting as possible in late 1943,  the airframes were not expected to last a long time, and if camouflage was needed, it could, and was field applied.   

 

Back to the UK,  It was very important, and demand for certain pigments to make green was such, with aircraft getting priority over the army and navy, who had to stop using green pigments mid war. 

 

Also, from a lengthy thread, https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235078859-accuracy-of-ammo-by-mig-jiménez-raf-wwii-colours/page/3/#elControls_4045174_menu

 

 

By @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies

 

I'm going to point out some facts about real-life paint manufacture and either the reader will understand and "get it" or will not understand and are in no position to contradict me.

 

1) Usually camouflage colours are fairly low saturation colours because these blend in better with nature. They're seldom bright and bold. Low saturation colours are normally manufactured by adding coloured pigments to a base made from inexpensive white or white and black pigments.

 

2) Colour pigments are expensive. The expense varies depending on the specific pigment, but they're expensive.

 

3) The only way to over-saturate a colour so much is to substantially over-dose your base with the expensive colour pigments. I'm not talking about a few percent more or less - that causes minor differences which you only confirm the presence of with one swatch adjacent to another - I'm talking more in the order of a double dose to get something you obviously look at and think "woah".

 

4) In the case of colours like dark olive, these are mostly white, black and ochre (which is relatively inexpensive for a colour pigment) sometimes further tinted with a bit of red or green (which are often very expensive).

 

5) There can certainly be variances in a manufactured paint, but these tend to be greatly overstated, i.e. used as a ready made excuse for all sorts of mistakes. Ultimately, the only way a manufactured paint can end up so oversaturated is to have dumped in a vast amount of the expensive pigments, if not adding in new additional pigments in large quantities not expected in the recipe. Frankly, it's difficult to see how any manufactured paint could end up so drastically off target, particularly in the over-saturated sense, by any business that wasn't actively trying to bankrupt itself by roasting through obscene quantities of pigments like chrome green which were already expensive at the start of the war and in particularly short supply during.

 

6) I'd venture that most of the "there was a war on, you know" type apologists for such spectacular errors probably don't have any actual experience of what is and isn't possible when mixing different proportions of 2,3 or 4 pigments when 2 of those are usually black and white just to make your base to tint. You simply cannot end up with a Humbrol 30-esque bluish green using only the ingredients to make olive - i.e. you'd actually have to sabotage it by introducing if not blue then an obviously bluish green. Same goes for that bright green Spitfire above - you can't achieve that with black, white, ochre and a touch of red - you'd need to fire in a lot of bright green pigment in to get that saturated on an overly-light base. It would be more tan-like just using the basic olive green ingredients which only turns obviously olive when tinted enough with black. Put another way, with a fixed number of pigments in various ratios you WILL end up somewhere within a certain envelope, and usually when colours like this bright green are discussed it's because it's well outside that envelope.

 

The point of all the above? In essence it's harder to make a credible explanation for how such a colour might have been arrived at in a real-life paint manufacturing environment than it is to demonstrate that someone would have had to go to a lot of trouble to get it so far wrong. That is harder to rationalise than just getting it closer to correct.

 

Just some useful pieces of information regarding paint during WW2 that are worth bearing in mind when these discussions arise,.

 

regarding this

"Put another way, with a fixed number of pigments in various ratios you WILL end up somewhere within a certain envelope"  

 

It is a very worthwhile exercise to get some black, yellow and red.

First try mixing black and yellow,  3 parts back to 1 part yellow will get you an olive drab,  3 part yellow to 1 part black gets very close to US interior green.

Adding red to these will give you dark and light browns.

That's without adding any white or ultramarine, also commonly used.   

 

What is hard is making up specific matches, and the actual colours used very carefully worked out, with subtle but important hues.   I found this out after finding very few RAF acrylic paints were anything like the RAF museum book chips.     

 

Hope of interest.,

[Blimpyboy]

13 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

the main role of paint on an aircraft is corrosion prevention !!!

The pedant in me says ‘not quite’.
 

With regard to combat platforms, the primary role of most final-coat (my term) colour paints is to provide a desired camouflage effect - otherwise, aircraft could be painted in the most effective/cheapest corrosion-preventive primers and secondary coatings, which would, in many instances, be counter to the desired optical/electrical battlefield effect. In fact, most final-colour coats (my term, again) are typically described as being principally "for desired optical properties".

There are any number of coatings that can be - and have been - applied easily and cheaply, for effective corrosion control, but which have not gone through an expensive and time-consuming military-specific colour development and trials process! Needless to say these are not always good for camouflage purposes!

 

Don’t get me wrong, paint is definitely a factor in corrosion control, but final-colour coatings are but one consideration - and the tip of the iceberg - in any proper, multi-layer corrosion control coating programme/regime.

One could just leave F-22s, UH-60s, etc. in several layers of bright blue or yellow-green anti-corrosion primer coat, sealed with an excellent - and cheaper - series of clear top coats; however, I’m not sure one would want to necessarily fly those suckers in combat, up close and personal with the enemy…!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 8, 2022 by Blimpyboy

[Graham Boak]

It is worth adding that paints in the Middle East were obtained from local sources, and this is also believed to be true of India with some paint coming from Australian sources.  With the RAAF's adoption of Foliage Green and Earth Brown, it is quite possible that spare stocks of the RAF Dark Green and Dark Earth previously used were then available for elsewhere.

 

As has been said, armchair generals talk of tactics, real generals talk of logistics.  If 8,000 tons of paint seems a lot, bear in mind that a standard cargo vessel contained 10,000 tons.  As I was told at a seminar, the first ship to arrive in the Gulf after Sadam's invasion carried more than the entire airlift up to that time.  So don't be afraid of large quantities - they were and are moved.

[Jazzie]

9 minutes ago, Phoenix44 said:

But paint is a priority, both for camouflage and corrosion control. Huge efforts went into paint and camouflage, both in terms of composition and colour. It makes little sense to go through all of that and then to not provide MUs and operational units with proper stocks.

Was it a priority though? Britmodeller is littered with paint threads where at some point along the way, anecdotes of paint supply issues crop up with mention of tins of dulux filling the gaps cropping up. While corrosion control is important, i am not sure if this was done with a war on, but if carried out, its done as sections are built and in preparing for a top coat, and lets face it, expectation of survival was kinda low! I fully expect that a manufacturer is fully stocked, an MU has adequate supply for their needs, although full section replacements would be factory painted and the front line supply trucks would be full of frankly more important supplies. 

[Dave Fleming]

2 hours ago, Jazzie said:

To be fair to the 41 sqn guys who painted more than just the Harrier with their special tails, they were using an auto paint that is so far removed from past technologies that there is very little difference to aviation paints these days.

 

Oh yeah, but it's an example that there are cases where non-aviation specific paint has been used