No. 67 (Fighter) Wing seems to be an exception, and No. 1 Squadron seems to have acceded to French requests to conform with their markings even more than No. 73 Squadron. Eventually, a stop was put to this and all British fighters, whether with Fighter Command or with British Air Forces in France were instructed to conform with the existing Air Ministry Orders.
On 16 April 1940, a month after this aircraft was lost, the Directorate of Operational Requirements issued this minute:
“The adoption of any sort of blue undersurface colouring is entirely out of the question as this is far too near to that of enemy aircraft. The addition of underwing red, white and blue roundels has been sanctioned. The complication of adopting striping on rudders as already carried out by some Air Component fighter units cannot be further tolerated, and this marking must be applied to the fin.”
Which is one of the reasons why most Battle of Britain British fighters looked pretty much the same. The underwing roundels for French based fighters had been sanctioned in AMO A.520 on 7 December 1939.
The Night/White undersides were not a temporary finish. This became an official factory finish.
As early as 10 May 1937 Dowding wrote to the Air Ministry, outlining how he believed that friendly fighters might be identified by anti-aircraft gunners and the Observer Corps. Initially his idea was that underside of one of the lower mainplanes (fighters were still bi-planes in 1937) should be finished in black, the other left in silver dope. Permission for an experiment with this marking to be carried out, at North Weald, came on 28 July. On 28 October Dowding again wrote to the Air Ministry, informing it of the results of the experiment. At the same time he suggested that with production of the Hurricane gaining pace, the undersides of the wings of these aircraft, including flaps and ailerons, should be painted black on the port side and white on the starboard side. In January 1938 the Air Ministry instructed Hawker to apply this black/white marking to a batch of fifty Hurricanes, though the underwing serial numbers were to be retained - painted white on the black wing. These aircraft left the production line with the fabric covered parts of the two wings black and white, the centre section and fuselage remained in silver dope. The resulting 'silver band' between the two colours destroyed the contrast and diminished the effectiveness of the scheme. This was eventually rectified at about the time of the Munich crisis, but there were aircraft in service which required modification to the scheme, which did not always happen in a timely fashion. In the last year of peace before the war, Hurricanes, and Spitfires, began to leave the production line in the correct Night/White scheme, the demarcation running down the centre of the fuselage.
The scheme remained in force for all 'Field Force' fighters until after the Battle of France and the beginning of the Battle of Britain. The new Sky undeerside colour was introduced from 7 June 1940.
Anyway, after that, here's a link to the completed kit:
Build thread and all sorts of explanations, fun diversions and even some bad photographs can be found here: Here's a few pictures of the finished model. It really is OOB, there are a few things I would otherwise have changed, but it is what it is. It's a very nice little kit which I...
www.scale-models.co.uk
