Blackburn Roc undersurface colour?

[GrahamB]

Hi,

Skua and Roc colours have exercised the minds of many over the years, and the articles by Ian Huntley in Scale Aircraft Modelling remain the best accounts. The well known series of photos of an echelon of Rocs includes two in Matthew Willis' Mushroom Model Publications book, pages 71 and 72. Dated August 1940, the photo on page 72 shows five aircraft with the second, fourth and fifth with a dark-coloured undersurface - of similar tone to the roundel blue. The other two have pale undersurfaces, presumably Sky Grey or Sky.

Does anyone have an informed opinion of the likely colour for these aircraft? Would Trainer Yellow give this result with the print type or are we looking at something like Light Mediterranean Blue?

Thanks.

Cheers

GrahamB

[Graham Boak]

The light colour will be Sky Grey: August is a bit early for Sky in the FAA. The dark colour will be the Night of the Night and White underside scheme.

My opinion, anyway. I can't imagine any reason for using the Med Blues.

[GrahamB]

Hi Graham,

the tone is not black/night, I think, and the dark tone is uniform - ie. under the starboard wing as well (actually the closest in these photos) - so can't be the b/w recognition pattern (port wing black). Just possibly, it might be night scheme though.

As usual this is probably an insoluable problem - and I agree that a Light Mediterranean Blue is unlikely - although late summer 1940 seems to have been a period of experimentation with undersurface colours before the supply of Sky kicked into full gear.

Cheers

Graham