Spitfire Mk IX camouflage - Dark Slate Grey and PRU Blue?

[Edgar]

There's another little oddity; Bader's Spitfire appears to be the only one with an aerial mast. Makes me wonder if it was hauled out of storage, and specially painted for the flypast.

Edgar

[Nick Millman]

I'm guessing that Bader, who went down in a DG/DE/Sky Spit and had not seen the inside of a Spit since, took an instant dislike to OG as being too "German" and insisted on having the OG segments re-painted on "his" aircraft. I bet he wanted Dark Earth, was told he couldn't have it and had to settle for MSG instead. I can just imagine the arguments about it and the stomping about.

A common practice in the MUs when over-painting sections of existing camouflage was to do it freehand and then remove the overspray from the adjoining section with solvent, leaving a telltale darker border on the original paint where the solvent had "cut in" to it. Bader's Spit does seem to have that.

[Graham T]

My interpretation of Bader's Spit in that photo? His simply had a "bit of bull" applied (likely for a wing co) or it was simply freshly painted. There, I have spoken, no more need be said.

[TheModeller]

There's another little oddity; Bader's Spitfire appears to be the only one with an aerial mast. Makes me wonder if it was hauled out of storage, and specially painted for the flypast.

Edgar

According to Morgan & Shacklady RK917 was a standard Supermarine Spitfire HF Mk.IX. It was built between August and October 1944 by Supermarine Aviation and was one of a mixed production order of Mk.IXs and Mk.XVIs.

The aircraft was initially delivered to 45MU in early October of 1944 where it was stored for a while before being passed on to Essex Sector based at North Weald in March 1945. It was transferred to the SAAF in February 1949.

[Andrew Jones]

Take a look at this topic posted here on Britmodeller and note the apparent variation in the colour of the OG upersurface with different angles and incident light. In the last photo particularly the OG looks much lighter, need I say more? And this is with modern film/digital photography not the films used in the 1940's.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.p...c=33737&hl=

[TheModeller]

Take a look at this topic posted here on Britmodeller and note the apparent variation in the colour of the OG upersurface with different angles and incident light. In the last photo particularly the OG looks much lighter, need I say more? And this is with modern film/digital photography not the films used in the 1940's.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.p...c=33737&hl=

Yes, I see the effect you're talking about but I think what you are missing is the opportunity for comparison in the images of RK917.

The first picture is one of a group that exist of the event at North Weald on September 15th 1945, I'm not saying they are part of a series because I'm not assuming they were all taken by the same photographer.

There are pictures of Bader and other senior RAF officers talking prior to the take-off, some of him boarding his aircraft, the one I've included above of RK917 lined up with other Spitfires along with a couple of others. They all show that in comparison to the other Spits, RK917 shows much greater contrast between its uppersurface colours.

I've also examined the Pathe film archive footage of the event at http://www.britishpathe.com, that footage was clearly taken using a very different film stock than was used for the still images, again the same degree of contrast is evident on RK917 in comparison to the other Spitfires in the film.

The second photo I posted was taken sometime after the flypast, on the day RK917 was not carrying underwing serials, they were added later, in isolation the image is suspect as it has the appearance of having been taken using ortho type film, although as I mentioned above if the film stock was affecting the contrast and fuselage roundel colours then why haven't the fin flash and underwing roundels been affected in the same way? And just for completeness, somebody mentioned that maybe RK917 was in a hangar when it rained... The puddles on the ground in the second image would indicate that it had recently rained when the picture was taken.

Other people may well come to other conclusions about the colours, for my part I've examined a variety of images from as many different sources as I've been able to find and explored as many possibilities as I can think of. Maybe I'm missing something but for now I've satisfied myself that the RK917 was painted in non-standard colours of overal MSG with a DG disruptive pattern.

Edited July 20, 2009 by TheModeller

[John]

To be honest I can't see much difference between the fuselage roundel and the tail flash on my monitor. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about the underside roundel since the lighting of that will be totally different to the lighting of the upper surfaces.

John

[TheModeller]

To be honest I can't see much difference between the fuselage roundel and the tail flash on my monitor. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about the underside roundel since the lighting of that will be totally different to the lighting of the upper surfaces.

John

That might just be because of the differing hardware, on the print from which the scan was taken there is a marked difference between the fuselage roundel and fin flash. On my screen the scan looks identical to the print.

[Andrew Jones]

Yes, I see the effect you're talking about but I think what you are missing is the opportunity for comparison in the images of RK917.

The first picture is one of a group that exist of the event at North Weald on September 15th 1945, I'm not saying they are part of a series because I'm not assuming they were all taken by the same photographer.

There are pictures of Bader and other senior RAF officers talking prior to the take-off, some of him boarding his aircraft, the one I've included above of RK917 lined up with other Spitfires along with a couple of others. They all show that in comparison to the other Spits, RK917 shows much greater contrast between its uppersurface colours.

I've also examined the Pathe film archive footage of the event at http://www.britishpathe.com, that footage was clearly taken using a very different film stock than was used for the still images, again the same degree of contrast is evident on RK917 in comparison to the other Spitfires in the film.

The second photo I posted was taken sometime after the flypast, on the day RK917 was not carrying underwing serials, they were added later, in isolation the image is suspect as it has the appearance of having been taken using ortho type film, although as I mentioned above if the film stock was affecting the contrast and fuselage roundel colours then why haven't the fin flash and underwing roundels been affected in the same way? And just for completeness, somebody mentioned that maybe RK917 was in a hangar when it rained... The puddles on the ground in the second image would indicate that it had recently rained when the picture was taken.

Other people may well come to other conclusions about the colours, for my part I've examined a variety of images from as many different sources as I've been able to find and explored as many possibilities as I can think of. Maybe I'm missing something but for now I've satisfied myself that the RK917 was painted in non-standard colours of overal MSG with a DG disruptive pattern.

I've just been looking at the British Pathe film and yes I must admit it does appear to be a single grey with a DG disruptive pattern and notice how wide the overspray boundaries are, also there is no hard edge where the green meets the undersurface, the whole scheme appears to have been sprayed freehand with no masking. Looks a bit of a rush job to me, the green almost wrpping around onto the undersurface below the fuselage roundel. The scheme is much clearer here than in the still photgraph.

[Tango India Mike]

How on earth do you find this footage, chaps? I've tried every combination of words I can think of, but the search comes up with no result every time!

[Seahawk]

How on earth do you find this footage, chaps? I've tried every combination of words I can think of, but the search comes up with no result every time!

Likewise. Pray enlighten us.

Nick

[Graham T]

Likewise. Pray enlighten us.

Nick

Search Douglas Bader, or just click here! http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=13376

[TheModeller]

Search Douglas Bader, or just click here! http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=13376

Thats the one, I have an older copy in .WMV format on my hard disk, it clearly shows that RK917 is a very different colour in comparison to the other Spitfires present, given that images from 3 different sources seem to show the same thing I elected to go with the simplest solution, it is a different colour and the nearest I've been able to work is the scheme I mentioned above, overall MSG with DG camo.

Edited July 20, 2009 by TheModeller

[John]

I'm guessing that Bader, who went down in a DG/DE/Sky Spit and had not seen the inside of a Spit since, took an instant dislike to OG as being too "German" and insisted on having the OG segments re-painted on "his" aircraft. I bet he wanted Dark Earth, was told he couldn't have it and had to settle for MSG instead. I can just imagine the arguments about it and the stomping about.

<snip>

That'll also be why it doesn't have cannons!

John

[TheModeller]

Looks a bit of a rush job to me, the green almost wrpping around onto the undersurface below the fuselage roundel. The scheme is much clearer here than in the still photgraph.

Yes it has all the hallmarks of a rapid re-paint, I've been unable to make out any stencilling either, why the repaint? As I said, Bader was flying the lead aircraft of a very large formation, the aircraft assembled over Kent to head in over London along the Thames, I think, think mind you, not say for certain, the odd scheme was to make him more visible during the assembly, rather in the same manner the USAAF decorated tired old B24's to act as assembly ships for large bomber formations. Being Bader I expect he would have frowned on bright green polka-dots or candy-pink stripes...

So, the exact reason for the scheme may never come to light... Pilots whim, Bader was a Group Captain at this point so he may have been senior enough to get away with his own choice of colours? The only paint available? Possibly... Given her service history I don't think RK917 'needed' repainting, she spent 6 months in storage before being assigned to the Essex Sector station flight so wear and tear due to heavy use seems unlikely, and if she was in a bit of a state when Bader transferred to North Weald why would he have chosen that particular machine over any other? He could have taken his pick...

We'll probably never find out, but it makes for an interesting scheme on a model and that was the point of my research anyway.

Edited July 20, 2009 by TheModeller

[Tango India Mike]

Thanks Graham, but I have to concede defeat! Not a lot of fun watching it stop and start every two seconds and then find that there's no provision for playing it back uninterrupted...a bit disappointing really. How do they expect anyone to watch these things?

[Dave Fleming]

Thanks Graham, but I have to concede defeat! Not a lot of fun watching it stop and start every two seconds and then find that there's no provision for playing it back uninterrupted...a bit disappointing really. How do they expect anyone to watch these things?

Tim,

Probably down to the speed of the connection

Click on 'stills' at bottom left and you can get a full range of still images from the video. Click on the thumbnail and you get a big pic (albeit with Pathe copyright on it)

e.g

http://www.britishpathe.com/ImgRetrieve.ph...media_urn=40259

http://www.britishpathe.com/ImgRetrieve.ph...media_urn=40259

You can vary the frequency of stills as well. Got some very useful reference pics this way. You used to be able to download WMV files, but you can still download streaming Flash with some tools, like Real Player or Orbit

Edited July 20, 2009 by Dave Fleming

[Peter B]

Gentlemen, Gentlemen. May I add my two penn'orth on this subject.

Being an old fart and having been brought up in the mysterious dark arts of black and white photography, I am afraid there are far too many variables to ever get a definitive answer when trying to identify colours from black and white pictures, especially from the 1940's era. Guestimation only. The variables are affected by:

Film/Plates: By today's standards, these were generally of pretty poor quality and very slow in the ASA (speed) department. Professional photographers had the edge of course.

Lenses: Some were quite good on the large professional plate cameras but the majority of average cameras had lenses of less than average quality.

Developing: Was the film overdeveloped or under developed? Makes a difference to the density and graininess of the negatives and thence the tone of the finished print.

Printing: Was the paper selected of the correct grade? Printing papers have various grades of contrast which greatly affect the reproduction of tonal contrast in the final print.

Subject: Many forumees have spoken correctly of ambient light. Times of the day also come into play. Colour 'temperatures' change during the course of the day (Kelvin). Set your camera up on a tripod and take a pic of a subject on the hour, every hour, and see how the colour of the subject varies from early morning to late afternoon.

Finally, I would expect that in the years since the photographs were taken, they would have been copied, the copies re-copied etc etc and then scanned through multi processes which is bound to have a marked effect in the difference between the original print and the reproductions we now see in the electronic and printed media.

By the way, the perception of colour and tone is a subjective one. Take it from one who is partially colourblind and who fails the identification of objects in the coloured dots test very miserably.

That of course is another variable!!

Interesting forum though - handbags and all.

[Nigel Bunker]

To my eyes, the tonal value of the dark colour is a close match to the roundel red, and this ties in to a memo found under the carpet at the MoD when the offices were refurbished.

An extract from the memo dated 01.04.45 (obviously written after a liquid lunch) from Flt Lt Julian Clary says "........Now this nasty war is over, why don't we repaint the fighters in red and pink to show we are now friends with those lovely Russians......"

This is obviously conclusive proof, and Bader's plane must have ben a trial aircraft in this scheme.

How much does Neil Robinson pay for articles?

[thx6667]

To my eyes, the tonal value of the dark colour is a close match to the roundel red, and this ties in to a memo found under the carpet at the MoD when the offices were refurbished.

An extract from the memo dated 01.04.45 (obviously written after a liquid lunch) from Flt Lt Julian Clary says "........Now this nasty war is over, why don't we repaint the fighters in red and pink to show we are now friends with those lovely Russians......"

That memo was later superceded by a very curt directive from Vice Air Marshall Kenneth Williams who told the various Sqns to "... stop messin' about" when it came to painting Spitfires.

[Nigel Bunker]

Before we too wound up about colours, look at these pictures by Monet. they are of the same haystack, painted under different lighting conditions.

What interested Monet was the expression of transient appearances – the motif itself would be unvarying and viewed always from the same angle, only the light would change, depending on the season, the weather and the time of day.

His method was to work on several canvases at once, devoting perhaps no more than a few minutes at a time to any one of them. It was necessary to work swiftly to capture the ‘moment’ before it dissolved. In this he was greatly assisted by his stepdaughter Blanche, who would slide the canvases into position on his easel.

On 7 October, in full flight, he wrote to Gustave Geffroy: “…the further I get, the more I see how much work it will need to convey what I am searching for: ‘instantaneity’, and above all the external ‘envelope’, the same light spread everywhere…”

[Nick Millman]

"Before we (get) too wound up about colours, look at these pictures by Monet. they are of the same haystack, painted under different lighting conditions."

Yes, very interesting. I remember that from my Art studies in the middle of the last Century. But the analogy is not directly relevant to the question of the colours of Bader's Spitfire. That concerns the variant appearance of one Spitfire from several others, photographed and filmed on the same day at the same time and under the same ambient light conditions. It would be the equivalent of a field full of Monet's haystacks where one appears different.

And colours are just a wind up per se. I know of no other subject in modelling where so much is written by so many to so little purpose, including me. In future I'm going to try and spend more time discussing shapes and plans . . .

[rossm]

Let me throw my handbag into the ring - no, that was a couple of pages back.

Even further back someone said they prefer to rely on those like Mike Bowyer who were there at the time - well Mr.Bowyer did pick up on the experimental Hurricane schemes tried at Duxford, who is to say Duxford was the only place that experimental schemes were tried ?

On the subject of interpreting B+W pics I can (given time) put my hand on a couple of Meteor (FR9 ? where's my memory when I need it?) pictures, look like they must be the same aircraft on the same sortie a few frames apart (ok, not proven) and one is very high contrast which you could swear was DG+MSG while the other looks absolutely standard in contrast so must be DG+DSG.

I've enjoyed this thread, just like I enjoy dipping into Mike Bowyer's colours books and Paul Lucas and other's articles but, at the end of the day (it's a cliche a minute just now), I like to make my own decisions based on everything I can find which doesn't include original documents or personal observation 'cos I'm too far from London and too young so I have to put some reliance on others. Being aware of alternative points of view gives me a chance to put something personal (interpretation) into my models and adds to my enjoyment of modelling. If someone picks up on it at an exhibition and we can have a friendly discussion then even better 'cos I might find out something I didn't know before.

So thank you to everyone who has put in their opinions on the 'alternative' Spitfire colour scheme and to those who put in opinions on personalities please don't waste my time with unhelpful posts that I have to sift through to get to the enjoyable ones,

Ross

[Edgar]

Even further back someone said they prefer to rely on those like Mike Bowyer who were there at the time - well Mr.Bowyer did pick up on the experimental Hurricane schemes tried at Duxford, who is to say Duxford was the only place that experimental schemes were tried ?

It wasn't; Boscombe Down was involved in nightfighter schemes research. In the Profile, on the Typhoon, F.K.Mason says that the radar-equipped car-door Typhoon was painted Extra Dark Sea Green and Middle Stone. This is always (understandably) dismissed as nonsense, but the two colours are a somewhat strange choice for a total fabrication, and Camm did pass all of his Typhoon paperwork to Mason, when he knew that a book was being planned. Just to compound the "felony," close study of photos in "Typhoon & Tempest at War," shows fairly ropey, and decidedly non-standard, painting, with the dark colour encroaching onto the wingtip aerials (why repaint an already dark green area?) In bright sunlight the yellow roundel surround disappears completely, and I've never seen that happen on MSG (on a Mosquito, for example.) I read (somewhere) that Middle Stone was tried, for nightfighters (maybe to try a yellow paint under yellow moonlight?) and the green could have been the closest colour to NIVO, available at that time. I plan to build a Revell Typhoon in Mason's scheme, and it will be fun to have the usual "Prove me wrong" sessions at model shows.

Edgar

[Max Headroom]

Sorry, Nick, I should have added "in revelatory magazine articles." Add in the use of smooth paints, later in the war, and the tendency for groundcrews to titivate, and polish "their" aircraft, and the recipe gets even more complicated. Strange, too, that, all the times that I've been to the RAF Museum, apart from heavily weathered examples, I've never seen a colour photo(and they have quite a lot) with umpteen greys, and odd greens, on the same airframe.

Edgar

I know that I am stepping into shark infested waters here, so be kind to me!

Consider this well known colour photo

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_hj2CaKxeuog/RfgryL38...c/spitfireV.jpg

it's the Spit V I have mentioned in some previous posts. IMHO it is the single grottiest Spitfire ever. I know it's mostly dk. green/dk. earth and is a Vb, but what it shows is the gradual repainting process that must have happened to many an airframe on the front line. I can see two shades of grey and two of dark green. As an aside it also shows an 'A' pattern camoflage with reversed colours and what's more the upper cowl is 'A' pattern but the right way around! Add to that the decidedly non standard white spinner, codes and fuselage band, lots of oil streaks and what you end up with is what could kindly be referred to as a right dogs dinner.

I love it!

I am neither for nor against Mr Lucas, but this pic shows that there were some strange examples out there. As long as whoever postulates a theory states (and says that it is a theory) how they arrived at a conclusion, then we as rational adults can make our own judgement as to the efficacy of that conclusion.

As a sign off from this post, can I say that I was going to ask for help on this pic anyway.

1. is there a port side view anywhere?

2. does anyone do a sheet either in 1/72 or 1/48 for this bird?

thank you and good night..........zzzzzzzzzzzzzz