Too Many Shades Of Grey (And Green) - Late War RAF Camouflage

It now been a considerable time since I actually completed a model aircraft, 5 months in fact. One satisfying part of that particular build was that I finally managed to replicate the early WWII RAF camouflage scheme of dark earth and dark green.

So that just left the late war scheme, which replaced the dark earth, (brown), with ocean grey as the air battle moved out over the English Channel and beyond. Should be pretty straight forward you'd have thought, so with that in mind I decided to give it a try.

I decided I would try two kits at the same time, both built straight out of the box as the main objective was the colour scheme. The kits, Airfix's 1:72 Hawker Typhoon IIb (A02041) and the Sptifire MK.IXc (A02065A). I'd picked them both up at the Home Bargain Store in the UK which had been selling off Airfix kits for less than half price at £2.99 each.

As well as the RAF camouflage I also wanted to compare pre-shading and not, and I wanted to try airbrushing invasion stripes rather than using decals.

Before I could start on the exterior there was the small matter of the interiors, and there was quite a difference between the two. The Spitfire was absolutely basic, which was surprising for a kit released in 2009 and for a kit which actually had some nice exterior details and fine panel lines which couldn't be said for all Airfix kits at that time.

The Typhoon on the other hand seemed almost over engineered. The cockpit floor also consisted of the wheel wells. The instrument panel, rear panel, seat and air intake all had to be fitted between the two halves of the fuselage meaning it took several goes of adding a piece, letting it dry, adding another and so on. It certainly looks good, but it seemed like it required a little more effort that was perhaps necessary.

After that it was a case of assembling the wings. The lower part of the wings left awful joints at the sides of the air intake and a huge step at the rear which would require considerable filling.

So while all that filling and sanding was going on I decided to get on with painting the Spitfire (the Spitfire went together easily).

I started by pre-shading with Vallejo Model Air Black, 71.057 and then painted the undersides with Barley White 71.051 which was highlighted with thinned coat of Pale Blue Grey 71.046.

Moving onto the upper sides I couldn't really find a suitable shade for Ocean Grey so I mixed Tamiya XF-18, XF-21, XF-24 to a ratio of 1:2:2 and sprayed the whole topside. I then started on the green by using Vallejo Model Air 71.016 over sprayed with 71.017 as I'd used for my early war scheme. My reasoning was that RAF aircraft used the same green throughout the war so I could just re-use the previous colours.

But this didn't look right. Was it because I was spraying green over a grey base coat, rather than dark earth? Quite probably, so I tried to correct it and things then went from bad to worse. Then I realised actually my Ocean grey was too dark anyway. Time to get the paint stripper out.

How not to do RAF Camouflage

So once again, I'd failed with Vallejo Model Air colours and to be honest, I'm getting a bit tired of this. OK, so my Tamiya mix hadn't worked out either, I can probably correct that though. However I then realised Tamiya had extended their paint range and introduced three RAF late war colours, XF-81, 82, 83 so tomorrow I'm going to pick them up.

Still, at least I had the Typhoon to fall back on. Except there was a problem. It turns out that the lower wing piece I'd mentioned was quite flexible and so the wheel covers wouldn't fit without considerable trimming and I was planning on depicting the aircraft in flight.

Good thing I bought two Typhoons...