Steve's little Hurricane

[stona]

I have been given this to build:



It will be returned to it's 'owner' where its life expectancy will be considerably shorter than it would have been in the Battle of France. With that in mind I will build it out of the box, not investing in any pointless extras.
I know this was F/O Paul Richey's aircraft when he was with No. 1 Squadron and I have his auto-biography - somewhere. If I can find it I'll see if there's anything helpful in it.

[rtfoe]

Ah Steve, this will be a relaxing build I see. Much better than torturing myself converting as best I can of a MkI to a MkIIc. The kit was also given and the owner wanted a livery which needed the change although he wasn't fussy about it. Just me wanting to get it just a little right.
Looking forward to the autobiography and build. Always like your intros.

Cheers,
Wabble

[stona]

Ah Steve, this will be a relaxing build I see.

Indeed!
I just came back to say that on first look this is a very nice kit and looks like it goes together very well. It has some surprising colour calls in the cockpit, but in the spirit of OOBoxedness I'm just going with them. This might not be the case for the exterior colours as the black 'n' white underside in the instructions is, I think, wrong for the place and time I'm doing*.
At 1/72 scale, I feel my magnifier may be getting a bit of a work out

*None of the profiles for this aircraft that I have seen feature a light blue underside. Richey, writing at the end of March 1940 makes it clear that this colour was applied to the undersides of No.1 Squadron’s Hurricanes.

“While still with Fighter Command, in order to facilitate recognition by our observers on the ground the undersides of our wings were painted black on one side, white on the other. We considered this to be idiotic, since the German aircraft were duck-egg blue underneath and very difficult to spot from below, whereas we stood out like flying chequer-boards. So the Bull gave orders for the undersides of our aircraft to be painted duck-egg blue, and this too was later adopted for all RAF fighters.”

What Richey called 'duck-egg blue' is otherwise described as 'light blue' and may have been, or been close to, the French colour 'Gris Bleu Clair'. It wasn't 'later adopted for all RAF fighters'. That colour was, of course, Sky which is not really blue at all.

[Steve-the-Duck]

Oh, this will be a good one

How many times have I built ghis kit now? One converted to the prototype, one as the first in service, what can I do for a hat-trick?

Richey quotes that, at the time, they thought of German 'planes having duck egg blue undersides? Wasn't there a 'light blue' in use in the Middle East? Albeit that's darker yhan 'hellblau' (or whatever). Hey, as you definitely know this stuff, where does the name 'duck egg blue' come from? And is 'duck egg green' contemporary, or just from Airfix paints in 1958 (lol)

Oh, I do apologise, I just wrote 'lol' there

[stona]

Luftwaffe undersides were RLM 65 at the time, which was a very distinctly blue light-blue colour. French undersides were Gris Bleu Clair which was also distinctly blue, not very grey, though more muted than the German RLM 65.
Whether No. 1 Squadron went for the French colour or used something they had (or made up) as far as I know, nobody knows. The French really were keen that the British adopt their schemes and went so far to state that if we did not, they would not be responsible for any recognition errors. They re-iterated this in January 1940, shortly before No. 1 Squadron seems to have obliged.

The underside colour Sky was officially adopted in June 1940 and was sometimes described as 'duck-egg blue'. This was a development of an earlier colour, developed by Sidney Cotton at Heston and called Camotint. The description of Sky as duck-egg blue caused no end of well documented confusion and a plethora of signals attempting to explain exactly what the new colour was. What ever it was, it certainly wasn't blue!
A message sent in June 1940 in an effort to clarify the situation probably did not help. It read:

"Ref my X.915 June 7th the colour of camouflage sky type S repeat S maybe described as Duck Egg Bluish Green."

It's underlined in the original. I wonder whether this person had seen the new colour! Also the emphasis on the type S is entirely unecessary. It has nothing to do with the colour at all.

A month earlier, in a letter to the Bristol Aeroplane Company regarding the colours to be applied to the Blenheim IV we find the following regarding Camotint and Sky.

"As regards the colour, the pale blue-green which has been called Camotint is now defined as Standard Sky and this description should be given in your schedule."

Blue-green seems to be a common thread, though to my eye Sky is much more green than blue.

[yak face]

Great little kit steve , I loved building it . Interesting stuff regarding the French insisting on their colours being used .

[stona]

Great little kit

It is indeed - so far so good anyway.



The hardest thing so far was getting the seat to stick, it doesn't have the most substantiall attachments. It's in now. The armour in the primer colour was one of those 'interesting' colour calls.

Edit: That might not be armour, but a panel closing off the 'doghouse' behind the pilot's seat. Why that colour? No idea.

[tr1ckey66]

A great little kit Steve and a nice speedy build. The colour callouts are interesting.

Cjheers
Paul

[stona]

A great little kit Steve and a nice speedy build. The colour callouts are interesting.

Cjheers
Paul

And wrong.
Apparently that brick red colour (70) is a typo and it should be 78, interior grey-green!
Luckily, I haven't attached the canopy yet, so it's fixable.

[stona]

I just had enough time to do the little bit of work necessary before getting the primer on.



The reason it looks like it is coated in 'vantablack' rather than just black plastic primer is my complete lack of any photograhic skills!

[Steve-the-Duck]

Now I see what Jakko meant about my use of Halfords black primer. Is that just a Hurricane-shaped cut-out we're looking at?

[Guest]

More importantly, do you even have a licence to use that black in an artistic application like this …?

[stona]

I've got the basic camouflage on.



Unfortunately, that's as far as I can get for a couple of days as the real world and work has intervened...again.

I'be left the rudder off because that will either have a decal on each side covering the entire surface, or more likely be sprayed with the red-white-blue national marking, British style, but French position.

[papa 695]

Looking good Steve.

[stona]

As luck would have it, I got away at lunchtime today and have managed to get more done.
It occured to me that I hadn't shown the 'light blue' underside (controversial!) which in my case is a lightened Azure Blue, then thoroughly mucked up. The port wing, the entire port underside, would have been black and I don't care who you are, painting a light blue over black is going to be a challenge.