The Little World

Or was that RLM Light Puce? Or Cockpit Poo Brown?

Every source of information that one can access about authentic colours for scale models is based upon the opinion of the person who wrote it…and that may be perfectly valid, adequately valid, nearly valid, or a dog-bone lie. If it is connected in a commercial sense with a firm selling paint you can be sure of one thing; the advice will recommend the paint that the firm makes. If the cockpit ends up brown instead of green because they don’t have a green in their catalogue you can be comforted by the fact that somewhere there is a brown cockpit. It might have taken a lot of research to find it, but it’s out there somewhere.

The sorry thing is that you cannot get all the paint colours you need in the offerings of one manufacturer – you really do have to mix and match. And you are going to be extremely fortunate if you can get all you need in any one chemical family. You may have to range over water-based acrylic, alcohol-based acrylic, oil-based enamel, or lacquers…which are based on leftover Soviet rocket fuel that the Russians are too frightened to store any more.

And even then – when you possess every paint pot in the shop and enough thinners to devastate Texas City if you generate a spark, you’ll still find some aircraft profile publication or internet site that asks for a different shade. It may be a practical joke being played upon us by the paint industry.

I recently was asked to coat the top of a Canadian aircraft with Dark Slate Grey and Extra Dark Sea Grey. Not possessing either of these shades according to the paper labels on the paint pots, I resorted to looking at as many Internet images of the plane as I could find and then mixing up the colours myself. If I am right I have a fine representation, and if I am wrong I have a fine representation in a slightly different patch of sunlight. Neither case will cause me to lose sleep or refuse nourishment. At the worst, a weathering spray can be thrown over the aircraft and it can be said to have been in heavy service.

The most I ask of the makers of kits is that they look ahead with the builders to the eventual likely scheme. If it is going to be a Coastal Command aircraft, mould it in white. We’ll undercoat in white, topcoat in white, and then deal with the upper surfaces in our own way. Just don’t force us to try to overcoat blue or black.

Likewise if we are making a Bomber Command plane, black plastic is the go, rather than grey. For other service sectors get as close to most of the aircraft’s surface colour with the plastic material and we’ll take it from there.