1:32 P-40E (USAAF & Australia)

One airframe, two schools of camouflage

The Curtiss P-40E was one of the few machines to carry both the American and the British logic of painting in one war. American squadrons took it over in the factory combination of olive green above and neutral gray below, that is in a single-shade upper finish with no pattern. Australian and New Zealand machines, by contrast, were given the legacy of British doctrine: two upper colors, earth brown and foliage green, laid out in irregular fields meant to break up the outline of the aircraft when seen from above against jungle and bush.

Why these colors in particular

The difference was not a matter of taste but of doctrine. The US Army Air Forces reckoned on seeing the enemy first, and camouflage was there mainly to cut the visibility of a machine standing on the airfield. The British school came out of the experience of Europe, where an aircraft was looked for against the background of the ground, and so it insisted on a pattern. Where the two schools met over New Guinea and over the north of Australia, machines of the same type flew side by side in two completely different palettes.

What comes out of the set

The masks are cut from self-adhesive film and follow the framing of the canopy. The set deals with the glazing from both sides, so that after it is glued in, the inner surface stays clear as well, where a mist of paint would otherwise settle. The second part covers the places of the national insignia, so the star is created by spraying and lies in the paint rather than on a decal. In a large scale that shows: a decal ripples on the bulged side of the fuselage, whereas a sprayed marking follows the shape perfectly. Neither the aircraft model nor paints are part of the package.