Hawker Hurricane Mk.I camouflage schemes

[macmullin]

I would like someone to confirm information about early Hawker Hurricane Mk.I camouflage schemes. From what I understand, the “A” Pattern was painted on aircraft that had uneven serial numbers, and “B” Pattern was painted on aircraft that had even serial numbers – is this correct, or was this in the reverse?

Now how long did this “A” and “B” Pattern practice take place?

Did all Hawker Hurricane’s from the factory floor until the Battle of Britain have a silver-white dope painted finish on their under sides?

Thank you in advance :-)

[Graham Boak]

Strictly, the A/B patters were suppoed to be appropriate to the first in the batch - usually this was an odd serial being A. (I don't know of any exceptions in the Hurricane runs, but haven't checked it.)

Strictly, Dope is applied to fabric to tighten it, and not to the paint, but on fabric covered aircraft the cellulose-based paints were commonly known as dopes.

Hurricanes began with Aluminium undersides, but soon changed to black and white undersides. Initially this was just the outer wing panels, but this applied to only one batch prewar. The standard was half black and half white, divided down the underside of the aircraft, but some (many?) examples retained Aluminium under the nose and under the rear fuselage.

[Larry]

Hawker Hurricanes in the first batch starting with L1547, that had odd number serials were painted in scheme A and those with even serials had scheme B.

However, it seems that if a Hurricane was restored following a flying accident / battle damage that the official scheme was not always followed. I'm sure most were done correctly but can you imagine a Civilian Repair Unit bothering to repaint the aircraft again when getting them back in service was the most important thing.

I have made a study of Hurricane L1592 in the Science Museum London, and although it was built with a scheme A paint job and appears to have this when it was with 43 Sqn, this was changed to scheme B after it was repaired after being damaged in action on 18th August 1940 while being flown by PO Locker of 615 Sqn.

In late 1940 it even acquired a replacement starboard wing from another Hurricane so had a scheme A on its starboard wing and scheme B every where else!

After the war it was 'restored back to the original 615 Sqn 'A paint scheme' for display purposes.