The Little World

At a certain point in the construction of the McDonnell Banshee in Royal Canadian Navy livery I needed to consider the paints required. I took to the Academy instruction shoot and looked at their colour call-out chart.

It confirmed what I already knew from looking at internet pictures of the plane ( I had never been lucky enough to see one in real life during my youth )…The RCN painted ’em dark grey on top and light grey on bottom and then plastered British-style roundels, flashes, and unit markings over them. Even the names of the colours were predictable, but the numbers assigned to them on the paint chart started to go a bit wonky.

I accepted the advice – figuring that Academy and Gunze GSI probably knew best. As it is, I agreed with their underside choice but I think they got one shade wrong for the upperworks. In retrospect I think it should have been a darker grey, despite bearing a suitable name.

At the point that I concluded this, I had achieved a pretty nice upper finish and some of the trimming. Not wanting to scrub this off and risk ruining the rest of the build, I decided to chalk it up to experience and assign the blame for the odd shade to Ess Bend Aviation who refurbish planes for the Air World museum. I suspect it happens all too often in the world of the 1:1 air museum, if some of the internet pictures that visitors take are anything to go by.

The Smithsonian or the crew at Wright Patterson might be difficult to argue with and I would also bet on the accuracy at Duxford…but there is a Martlet in the RNAS Yeovilton that has sone eyebrow-raising colours…and everyone else does their very best with what they have available. I do not expect to see a lemon-yellow Lancaster in our local RAAF museum any time soon, but who knows what might happen after the spring paint sales…