RAF Black and White - and Eau De Nil

[Phoenix44]

15 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

 Not in July, which is when the paint was being applied.  Using Averages for specific periods is fraught with problems.

And you don't increase such averages by slowing down the aircraft they were using. Better to have the wrong colour than the wrong paint. And whilst there may have been shortages of one particular colour I'm not sure there were shortages of paint as such? 

[Selwyn]

2 hours ago, Phoenix44 said:

I would be utterly amazed if a missile was simply sprayed with a Halfords spray can. And that the RAF didn't have any far more suitable paints available. 

@Phoenix44 see above!

I aso know the guy who handed back the unfired missiles to the USAF, He said the chap nearly had a cardiac arrest when he saw them, and the RAF got a mega bill for repainting them.

 

Selwyn

 

We have strayed of the subject a bit so back to  Aircraft undersides now.............!

[Giorgio N]

A paint not specifically designed for use on a certain materials can do much worse than add extra drag and have a short life: certain paints can attack the underlying coat and in extreme cases reach the material and react badly, leading to corrosion on metal surfaces or damage on fabric. The RAF was always very wary of using different type of paints onto each other, so much that after the introduction of synthetic paints they explicitly forbade using synthetic on cellulose or viceversa. All aircraft carried stencils stating the type of paint used to indicate what would have been suitable or not for any touch-up. When the service showed such attention to the matter, I find it very hard to believe that they would have accepted any paint that did not conform to an accepted DTD specification, regardless of how urgent the need could have been.

The fact that manufacturers were allowed to continue delivering aircraft with black/white undersurfaces also shows how the RAF preferred to keep an approved finish rather than follow an "everything goes" approach.

For these reasons, I find hard to believe that any actual Eau de Nil paint would have been used if this was not available to the required specifications. Even if it was, there's then always the matter of availability... one thing is painting a few squiggles on a small number of missiles (how many Shrikes did the RAF receive in 1982 ? 10 ? 12?), different story is to repaint the undersides of all Spitfires and Hurricanes in a certain sector. Had Eau de Nil been available from stores in a proper specification there would have also likely been some mention of this being allowed to be used in some document. True that absence of proof is not proof of absence and maybe such a document will be found tomorrow morning but until this happens I retain my skepticism.

 

Speaking of the urgency of war, yes in 1982 a single airman may have been sent to buy some paint from Halford for the abovementioned squiggles, but when it was time to cover the undersides of the whole Sea Harrier fleet sent to the Falklands, the FAA did so with proper Extra Dark Sea Grey to the proper specification received through the proper channels. That the finish achieved differed slightly from the already present upper surfaces in the same colour is just another proof that application methods and the application at different times can lead to variations in the finish. If this occurred in a relatively controlled situation like before the Falklands, I wonder what could have happened in 1940 Fighter Command when paint was most likely mixed at unit/MU level from other pre-existing colours.

 

I am personally a big fan of Lucas work as he sure shed a lot of light over British aircraft camouflage. I don't doubt his findings on the wrecks he examined of course, however I feel that the conclusions from his work on BoB Spitfires have been misunderstood a bit, leading to a number of not verified claims.

 

[Giorgio N]

On 2/5/2023 at 9:55 AM, nheather said:

Was the ‘black’ used on the ‘half and half’ day fighter scheme the same as the ‘black’ used for bombers?

 

The answer would be.. it depends...

Depends in the sense that the black used on that scheme was Night, a combination of black and ultramarine pigments in use before the war, while starting in late 1939 the RAF started developing a black specifically for use on night fighters and bombers, development that lead to a paint named Special Night that was however found to be very draggy and was later replaced by a smoother paint.

So yes, some bombers had the same paint, some at some point used different ones.

There are a number of threads covering this, worth a search if you want to know more on the subjects, in the meantime I'll look for some references I have and see if I can post a summary

 

P.S. of course there's then the matter of how different these paints may be when reproduced on a model,...

Edited February 6, 2023 by Giorgio N

[nheather]

3 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

 

The answer would be.. it depends...

Depends in the sense that the black used on that scheme was "Night" while starting in late 1939 the RAF started developing a black specifically for use on night fighters and bombers, development that lead to a number of paints named "Special Night", that was however found to be very draggy and was later replaced by a smoother paint.

There are a number of threads covering this, worth a search if you want to know more on the subjects, in the meantime I'll look for some references I have and see if I can post a summary

I’m not thinking it would be Special Black which was a very matt black, lamp black, apparently came off on the hands and looked tatty very quickly.

 

I’m thinking the standard bomber black (night) - was that the same colour as used on the day fighter half and half scheme?

[Giorgio N]

11 minutes ago, nheather said:

I’m not thinking it would be Special Black which was a very matt black, lamp black, apparently came off on the hands and looked tatty very quickly.

 

I’m thinking the standard bomber black (night) - was that the same colour as used on the day fighter half and half scheme?

 

Sorry, wasn't aware you already knew of these developments. Yes, not special night for sure, regarding the later Night used on bombers I'd have to check. IIRC the colour was the same but I have an article on an old MAM issue where the development of Night, Special Night and the later blacks is discussed. I'll have a look and get back (but sure others will know )

[plasticmasher]

Re. Being amazed at use of a retail spray can to tone down the white finish of an anti-radar missile quoted earlier in the thread, I personally have used boxes of Brunswick Green (my best comparison to a known airfix colour of the olde days) gloss enamel aerosol intended for radiators etc, bought from a hardware shop in downtown Kuwait City and sprayed onto eroded tip shields of Lynx AH7 during theatre qualifications heavy flying periods of desert dust landings - anything we could get our hands on to give a sacrificial layer to make the blades last a few more sorties. When there's a job to do, engineering decisions are made regardless of 'the rules'; Warrant Officers, Eng Officers just want serviceable aircraft for the crews to fly. So using Eau de Nil as a sky substitute, very possible if available easily. I've seen it on smoke grenades, still got a couple in the shed (!) and brush painted it as primer on Bedford trucks so it's nearly always in a QM locker somewhere! 

 

[georgeusa]

Okay, now for the most important question, what paint manufacturer makes the closest off the shelf color of "Sky", in enamel and/or acrylic?  If it has to be mixed, then individual interpretation of what a drop is and the correct shade has been mixed comes into play.  Think of it as a novice modeler going to the supply hut to pick the pre-manufactured mandated color of "Sky".

[Black Knight]

I'm happy with Revell #59 'Himmelblau' or 'Sky'

[Troy Smith]

17 minutes ago, georgeusa said:

what paint manufacturer makes the closest off the shelf color of "Sky", in enamel

Colourcoats.  

 

17 minutes ago, georgeusa said:

or acrylic? 

The ones I have or have sample of  tend to be 'muddy',(Tamiya, Xtracrylix, AK interactive, Lifecolour, Hataka)   by this Sky, from visual observation of the RAF museum chip, is a very pale yellowy-green

Despite using yellow ochre and ultramarine pigments,   it does not have a slight brown hue,  which is what I mean by 'muddy'  it's a very bright colour.

 

I did a Tamiya mix, which was desert yellow (yellow ochre) and clear blue (ultramarine) with a lot of white. 

 

@Casey in this thread

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235117058-revell-aqua-acrylics/

Revell Aqua 36159 | RAF Sky

Difference: 1.63 DE

 

as suggested by 

4 minutes ago, Black Knight said:

I'm happy with Revell #59 'Himmelblau' or 'Sky'

 

Vallejo do Pastel Green 70.885

 

some bottles quote* FS34424,  which may well be what ANA 610 Sky became?  

@Casey  ?  fancy comparing the Elliot USN/USMC chip with FS595? 

 

ANA 610 Sky was used on Lend Lease types that required Sky, and is slightly greyer and very slightly darker version of MAP Sky.

 

For the non obsessed it is reasonable.  

 

*Having been on another colour mix and match,  I have been playing with Vallejo, worryingly several of the duplicate bottles I have are clearly not the same even through the bottle, implying poor batch consistency.

They are also often poor when the quote FS595 or RAL when the paint is compared to the chips I have. 

[John Laidlaw]

57 minutes ago, georgeusa said:

Okay, now for the most important question, what paint manufacturer makes the closest off the shelf color of "Sky", in enamel and/or acrylic?  If it has to be mixed, then individual interpretation of what a drop is and the correct shade has been mixed comes into play.  Think of it as a novice modeler going to the supply hut to pick the pre-manufactured mandated color of "Sky".

Sovereign Colourcoats in enamel.

 

For acrylic, I've used Roy Sutherland's mix of Tamiya's XF-2 White, 3 parts to XF-21 Sky, 2 parts and am happy with it. I measure using the teeny tiny spoon at the end of a Tamiya stirrer.

[Casey]

1 hour ago, Troy Smith said:

?  fancy comparing the Elliot USN/USMC chip with FS595?

Sure. Here they are. I also included one little extra match - if you want acrylics, have aversion to mixing and Revell is not that easy to get, Golden has a paint that is 2.35DE from this particular RAF color... which is closer match than any acrylics I've checked except said Revell (and closer than any SKY 610, BS and FS colors)

 

It is cheapest of them all (from 5.37$/30ml to 33.94$ for 473ml) and differs in brightness only (plus if you want - it has a high flow version which is basically 'pour it directly to your airbrush' form).

 

 

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Casey

[Troy Smith]

4 minutes ago, Casey said:

Sure. Here they are

neat. Thanks.   I'd not realised tat the MAP Sky and the BS381 210 Sky were different, maybe this explains one of the problems, model paint makers matching to BS381 not realising that some vary from wartime MAP. 

cheers

T

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I don't think I'd read toooooo much into that Troy, as knowing the BSi it was probably a mistake in incorporating the MAP's Sky although hell will freeze over before they'd ever admit that.

 

In my 1996 edition of BS381C here the tabulated CIELAB values for 210 Sky are given as 70.91 -4.08 12.40 and Munsell (for those who don't loathe it as I do) 4.7GY 6.9 1.9 on page 2. The actual chip in my book measures at 67.3 -8.4 10.1. That's a Delta E of 5.88 with itself.

 

The copy our paint chemist has is different. I think I wrote before about BS381C-676 Light Weatherwork Grey and the *extreme* differences of the chip between different copies of the book and none of them matching the tabulated values. I just have a very low opinion of the quality of BS381C - especially given how much they charge for a small number of pages of lucky-dip colour chips.

 

 

[tempestfan]

On 2/3/2023 at 9:33 PM, Graham Boak said:

Looking further at this table, it seems that all the samples with Eau-de-Nil came from squadrons that were based around the Humber at the time of the introduction of Sky.  Which leaves all the units in the rest of the country...

 

Mystery solved! Must be Humbrol #1 then.

[Casey]

On 2/16/2023 at 3:36 AM, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

I think I wrote before about BS381C-676 Light Weatherwork Grey and the *extreme* differences of the chip between different copies of the book and none of them matching the tabulated values. I just have a very low opinion of the quality of BS381C - especially given how much they charge for a small number of pages of lucky-dip colour chips.

My BS physical samples copy and their table of values are bit different things, but not as bad as yours - you can see my BS381-210 reads 70.28 -3.72 and 11.37, which is acceptable 0.834 DE

 

I use same spectrophotometer geometry as they describe in the document (integrating sphere, D65/10deg, SCI). That last part is important since their samples are not matt.                                          

 

Here is how SCI/SCE geometry change affects the readout:

 

676 Light weatherwork grey on my BS copy reads:

L*a*b*: 68.27, -3.22, -3.26 on SCI d/8 - DE 0.710

L*a*b*: 67.15, -3.34, -3.23 on SCE d/8 - DE 1.264

 

The given table values are 68.58, -3.54, -2.70.

 

Some sensors have different light geometry -  I have two d/8 and one rare d/0. I don't have 45/0 one. The 45/0 is great for including the paint finish in measurements but with the cost of color accuracy, I'd expect the DE to be much larger large on that one. Examples of 45/0 geometry are all Nix sensors.

[ben_m]

On 2/15/2023 at 7:44 PM, georgeusa said:

Okay, now for the most important question, what paint manufacturer makes the closest off the shelf color of "Sky", in enamel and/or acrylic?  If it has to be mixed, then individual interpretation of what a drop is and the correct shade has been mixed comes into play.  Think of it as a novice modeler going to the supply hut to pick the pre-manufactured mandated color of "Sky".

 

Although maybe a bit out of date, this thread was pretty extensive in its coverage of available paints to match Sky:

 

[GrahamB]

An interesting thread but some confused logic and misinterpretations as usual. The data or evidence for what happened in the Summer of 1940 are unlikely to be added to significantly, but Paul Lucas has done some real spadework on the subject of the Sky/duck egg blue/eau de nil undersurfaces. The most recent, on the use of MAP Sky Blue over two articles in Scale Aircraft Modelling, cogently deals with the real misunderstanding of the real colour of Sky (type S) by the people at the sharp end. This was a nice surprise as it is actually what I was searching for in one of posts some time ago but was curtly dismissed.

 

Observers like Mike Bowyer and Ian Huntley were there and the latter, at least, was taking copious notes about what he had seen. The following is an extract from one of his articles An Observer's Diary, June 10, 1940 to April 17, 1941 - I think it was from either Scale Models or Aircraft Modelworld - I've just got my cut-out pages.

 

"July 12 1940 - Centre reported that on Wednesday (10) Gower Street gave plots on Me 109 and Me 110 fighters right over central London, no doubt because of the tank situation [fuel drop tanks].

     Received also was a clipping from a Sissons Brothers paint catalogue from the Group Officer. It was of a pale greenish colour and called by them Eau-de-Nil! it was in fact a very familiar colour, which dated back to 1897 (nothing new under the sun). For Centre's original 'very pale green'; read Sky; 'duck egg blue'; or 'Eau-de-Nil', for they are all one and the same colour!"

 

This is interesting because Sissons was a paint manufacturer in Hull (it was bombed a couple of times) and this could tie in with Graham Boak's comment above about the squadrons in East Yorkshire/North Lincolnshire (i.e. around Hull) receiving an eau-de-nil type paint job. A local supplier - even if the "wrong" type of paint?

Cheers,

GrahamB

Edited April 26, 2023 by GrahamB
spelling

[Graham Boak]

Well spotted.  A very neat link: perhaps too much so?  Did Sissons only supply these units or further afield?  It is certainly possible that more than one paint manufacturer was prepared to refer to Eau-de-Nil as a duck egg colour, which would open the possibilities of other units appearing with Eau-de-Nil as an alternative to Sky.  Doubts as to its availability as a suitable paint remain, despite those who think that's unimportant.  My original point however was that the evidence presented in Paul Lucas's (excellent)  book only applied to those units that were based around the Humber when Sky was introduced.   The book then made what I felt was an unjustified step in applying Eau-de-Nil to a majority of examples wherever they were based at the time.  Since then there has been Paul's discovery that the RAF MU issuing paint did not correctly identify Sky until November/December 1940!  It does seem that the recorded presence of Sky Blue (and possibly Sky Grey) is likely to have its basis with paints supplied from this MU before then.  Which still leaves at least some units in an unidentified pale green. This may be a misapplied Eau-de-Nil, an Eau-de-Nil in a suitable form unofficially supplied (but who paid the manufacturer for this?), some other colour altogether - though there seems to be quite sufficient ifs buts and maybes around already - or the simpler and quite convincing tales of badly mixed paints attempting to create who-knows-what but possibly simply an undefined "duck egg blue".

[anj4de]

Hello all

 

Stepping in on this here since I have a question...not about what to use of xyz when and how it looked but about paint recommendations forus modellers. I am currently working on an Airfix Hurricane Mk I in 1/48. the kit I had in my stash was the Sea Hurricane MkIb.

Now...I want an RAF airplane in between the battle of France and the BoB. I like the idea of hand overpainted undersides with no marking...my Tamiya Spit has that as well. Now I also want, for the 1st time in probably 40 years (since the 1/24 Airfix Spit) , to have an underside in duck egg green...or eau de nil. Back in the days this was available from Airfix and Humbrol (same stuff?) Both are now rarer then austrich teeth. I do have a bottle of Vallejo but I dislike this paint. It stinks like hand cream, dries slowly and does not work with normal Mr Color 400 thinner. It also seems not to be too tough. I do love Gunze Mr.Color and I am getting almost frenetic when it comes to MRP.

Does anyone know what color numbers in those ranges match "eau de nil" ?

 

thanks a lot

Uwe

Edited November 12, 2023 by anj4de

[Graham Boak]

Sky is still available in the Humbrol and Xtracolour ranges, and better still in Colourcoats.  Other suggestions are above.  

 

Humbrol used to do a Eau De Nil, or at least something very much like it, but I don't think that they have for decades.  As this was never a colour available in appropriate form, it is exceedingly unlikely to have been used in 1940.  Actual evidence for something identified as possibly matching this only exist in three examples, all from units in the area around the Humber Estuary at the time of the instruction.

[Chuck1945]

The acrylic lacquer MRP colors are pretty much airbrush only, way too thinned to be brush painted. MRP also have a water based acrylic range but I’ve not used it. As far as I know, there is no Mr Color (another acrylic lacquer line of paints that I use a great deal) Eau De Nil but there is a pretty good Sky, C-368. The lid looks way off for Sky but the actual paint is the appropriate color. There also is a Mr Color Duck Egg Green, C-26, that also looks like Sky.