Hurricane V7288 80 Sqn Help!

[mimithem]

Hi guys, I am currently building a model of Hawker Hurricane MkI in scale 1/48 which will turn to be Nigel Cullen's a/c that crashed in 4th March 1941 in the Ionian Sea, west of Albania.

There is only one shot of this a/c with the pilot as well (actually his last photo) depicting part of the machine the day of the crash.

The info is: 80 Squadron, V7288, Greece 1941, a/c came from Egypt.

Questions:
-Did the aircraft carry a tropical voke's filter or the standard european one? It's not visible in the photo. From other photographs of the same squadron's machines in 1941, there is a variety with hurricanes carrying voke's filter and other carrying the european.
-The camouflage seems to be temperate (Dark Earth/Dark Green) and not desert. There is no spaghetti camo on the leading edge of the wings and under the engine cowl. No squadron letters on the fuselage. Any idea about the colour of the wheel bay? I painted it pale green as the general interior colour but I see that many Hurricanes are painted gray in the wheel hub.
-Any idea for the underside colour?
-Any other info will be appreciated!

There is one more shot of 80 Sqn's Hurricanes taken in Palestine in 1941, not very far from the days of the war in Greece. It shows Hurricanes carrying Voke's filter, and still without squadron letters

Thank you for your time and please forgive me if this is not the suitable forum for modelling questions, but here I may find the right answers.

Themis

[Graham Boak]

I suggest that the wheel well will have been Aluminium, as this was normal for Hurricanes at the time. The underside colour will have been Sky or possibly more likely Azure Blue. It has been said that Sky Blue was used on overseas Hurricanes at this time but this is very pale and possibly a misunderstanding of Azure Blue. (I.e. a more generic sky-coloured blue rather than the specific official colour Sky Blue.) There was another colour seen on Hurricanes in the Middle East at this time which was "Iraqi Blue", a colour made locally, perhaps a little more intense than the light Azure Blue. Beware of some misunderstanding in model paints where Azure Blue appears darker and purplish.

[mimithem]

Thank you Graham. So I might repaint the wheel hub in aluminium. Some people suggest also a light gray but they say that this might have been painted during the operations and not Hawker factory.
As for the underside, duck egg is not a good idea? For sure it had to be a sky blue as you sah since it was operating in the desert, but does the dark earth/dark green match with a sky blue?
As for the vokes filter what do you think?

[Graham Boak]

Light grey undersides were not seen in the Middle East (other than on early Fleet Air Arm aircraft in Sky Grey) before the use of the Day Fighter Scheme (Medium Sea Grey) in Italy around 1943-4. It is exceedingly unlikely that any repainting was done during the Greek campaign, using any colour. They were operating at an extreme edge of supply lines, and anyway why should they?

Aircraft were delivered in a mixture of colours and fits, as you say, but I've no knowledge of which individuals had Vokes filters unless they can be seen on photos - it is safe to presume that the few desert-camouflaged ones did and presumably those seen with the light leading edges and mottle.

I think it is safe to suggest no more than that the majority of the aircraft are likely to have had blue undersides, and that's is what I would use. Given the Temperate Land colours, there's a possibility it could have been Sky. I prefer to accept the comment that Hurricanes going overseas had blue: others may differ.