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Spinners
Chris, et al
I too have noticed dark coloured spinners on Typhoons during the Liberation of North West Europe, especially in Normandy, but they are not the only ones to have had this anomaly. I have seen a private snap of a bomb carrying RAF Mustang III taken on the Normandy beachhead with its spinner painted black. The only reason why I think this was done was simply for the reason of camouflage. To give you an idea, I was lucky enough to have seen Black 6 fly on a sunny day during the Flying Legends Air show at Duxford in 1996. When the pilot was coming at the crowd from afar, all I could see in the blue sky was the white spinner and wing tips. So my best educated guess is that some of the pilots engaged in ground attack work most likely had their spinners darkened so they wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb for the flak gunners. I realize this was carried out against orders, but when your life is on the line…
Unless we get a consensus from the ground crews and pilots of these planes as to why this was done, we’ll probably never know unless “we” come across primary source material related to this. But, who has time to wade through all the paper at the PRO?
Regards,
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