Roal Dahl and spaghetti Hurricanes

[Kari Lumppio]

Hello!

The other day I finished reading a book authored by Roald Dahl. This Finnish edition was titled "Helppo nakki" (~ piece of cake, though literally it is "easy frankfurter"!).

The Finnish edition is a potpourri of author's different works and includes several flying stories: Gladiator crash, Greece, Palestine.

Is there anything known about the planes which Dahl flew? This is of course a modeller's question i.e. is there any photos? As I have understood chances are as slim as are finding photo of Pattle's mount?

Reading one story where Dahl writes how Hurricanes were pushed into olive tree woods the "spaghetti" Hurricanes immediately occurred to me. Mental picture was how Hurricane nose poked out between the trees showing the Sky (aluminium?) underside at least for low flying enemy planes. Camouflaging it with stripes of green might have been good idea. ( This also leads to the question about late war Lw wing leading edge underside camo, where I have had different opinon about the need...).

So has a modeller today possibility to build accurate and verified mount of Roald Dahl's?


Thanking in advance,

Kari

[Graham Boak]

Nice idea, but the wing leading edges wouldn't be showing, and the scheme was observed before the Greek campaign. I believe that one photo shows two Hurricanes being flown out to Greece, one in the "spaghetti" scheme.

Undersides were probably Sky Blue. The wrapround light colour on the nose and wing leading edges was the underside colour. if you consider it not as a protection scheme on the ground, but to reduce detection of an forthcoming attack from the ground, it makes more sense.

I don't think the serial of Dahl's aircraft is known (hopefully I'm wrong there), but at this stage it is unlikely to have carried any markings other than the serial.

[Håkan]

Hello Kari,

In the Swedish edition of Dahl's "Going Solo" - Soloflygning från 1986 there is a picture of a lightly camouflaged Hurricane with the text "My Hurricane at Megara". Unfortunately the image is very bad in my edition of the book but this means that somewhere an image of his Hurricane exist!

Best wishes/Håkan

[Graham Boak]

Dahl is recorded as flying V7826, on his first mission after bringing a replacement Hurricane. Whether this was the same machine I don't know. Does the photo show the "spaghetti" scheme?

V7795 and V7773 appear to have had this scheme, on Temperate Land colours, whereas V3732 didn't.

[Kari Lumppio]

Hello!

Thank you fellows. During the meantime I found also this thread at the ARC forum: http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/...owtopic=101583

The thread has one photo where a Hurricane seems to have the "spaghetti" camo underlay but not the stripes. Is it in good authority that this underlay was in underside colour? It makes sense to me, but there seems to be second opinons too giving it as Mid Stone.

The Finnish book has no photos whatsoever.


Corrected also the spelling above to Roald. Unfortunately cannot correct the title. Can you help, Ruy?

Cheers,
Kari

[Graham Boak]

There is no "good authority" for either interpretation. However,
1. It appears to be very light for Mid Stone
2. It appears to be the same as the underside, when this can be seen
3. It can be seen as a contrasting colour on aircraft in the Desert scheme, which contains Mid Stone.
4. No-one has come up with any reason for painting this area in Mid Stone....

The logical case for it being the underside colour is strong.

[Larry]

There is a Roald Dahl Centre in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire which has information on display concerning his RAF career. From memory I think there was extracts from his log book so the Centre or his family who live locally may still have his logbooks