Newsgroups: sci.military
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!cbnews!cbnews!military
From: tomoo@hpmcaa.mcm.hp.com (Tomoo Taguchi)
Subject: Re: RAF camouflage in early World War 2
Organization: HP McMinville Division
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 90 02:29:08 GMT
Approved: military@att.att.com
Message-ID: <1990Nov1.022908.9405@cbnews.att.com>
References: <1990Oct30.050259.4103@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Lines: 20



From: tomoo@hpmcaa.mcm.hp.com (Tomoo Taguchi)

I don't know about the mirrored scheme on the upper body, but I recently
read "Piece of Cake" by Derek Robinson which explained the underside paint
scheme.  At the beginning of the war, Fighter Command used the black and
white scheme to make the planes more visible to ground troops.  As the war
progressed they realized that being invisible was better than being visible
to "friendly" flak gunners (who tended to shoot at anything at flew anyway),
so they switched to the robin's egg blue scheme.

BTW, "Piece of Cake" is an excellent book about the first years of WWII for a
RAF fighter squadron.  I read the book after watching the television adaptation
on Masterpiece Theater.  The show was good even though they used Spitfires
rather than Hurricanes (probably due to the availability of flyable Spitfires).
Both the book and the show paint a different picture from the popular idea
of the few gallant fighter pilots who stopped Hitler's invasion plans.