possible TSR 2 colour schemes?

[PaulR]

Evening all,

I recently got lucky at the Tornado build and got myself a TSR 2 fuel tank set as a prize - must have been a sympathy vote! Anyway, was naturally compelled to buy another Airfix TSR2 to go with it, and was casting around for possible schemes. I have in mind maritime photo reconaissance or possibly even a Falklands emergency escort fighter modification for TSR2 raids from Ascension island. What would people suggest? Am drawn to Hemp and light aircraft grey, but that might be too early for a late 70s/early 80s timeframe. Anyway, what do people think?

Regards, Paul

[Dave Fleming]

Hemp came in on the NImrods in the mid-late 70s;

[Test Graham]

First one I saw was a Victor, but the Canberra T-17s weren't too far behind.

[smeds]

I'm currently building a 1/48 TSR 2 as an electronic warfare type machine. My chosen scheme might be the Hemp over Gray as I quite like that scheme. I find the two tone or overall gray's of today a bit dull and boring.

Had thought about green & gray cammo over light gray, but still undecided.

[venomvixen]

Mines a photo reconn jobbie

It looks wicked in green and grey

[Giorgio N]

From your post sounds like you're thinking more maritime patrol than photo recce. Guess this role would have been a bit hard for the TSR.2, while proper recce was in the specifications. A scheme that could be applied to a recce bird is that carried by some canberras with the usual dark green and dark sea grey upersurfaces but medium sea grey undersurfaces.

An interesting kind of mission could also be long range maritime strike: in this case apart from the hemp scheme (that was adopted as a compromise between camouflage in the air and on the ground and as such was really used on bigger aircrafts that were parked outdoor), it could be fun to imagine what dedicated scheme the RAF could have used. Now we know that the RAF buccaneer and tornadoes just carried the usual dg/dsg wraparound, but the german navy used a dark grey over white scheme on their F-104s and tornadoes used for the same mission. Would the RAF have ever used something that looked a lot like the then current FAA camo scheme ???

Maybe not, so another option could have been to look at what other countries were doing: they'd have found that not only the USN but also the soviets used light grey uppersurfaces over white and maybe a light aircraft grey over white scheme could have been considered.

Or maybe lag would have been considered too light... enters medium sea grey ! And if the planes had to be used also for operations over land, a compromise had to be found: here comes a scheme with MSG overall and dark green bands on the upper surfaces only... and if dark green is too dark why not use the old light slate grey, as done for a short time in the '50s on canberras and some fighters ? Back then the scheme had PRU blue undersides, maybe this would not be used on a low level machine like the TSR.2, but it would have looked great !

Edited September 23, 2011 by Giorgio N