BELGIAN AIR FORCE COLORS 1950S-1970S [SET]

Colors of Belgian fighters of the 1950s to the 1970s

After the Second World War the Belgian Air Force flew mostly British aircraft and took over the British way of painting them along with it. Meteors, Hunters and other machines with the tricolor roundel therefore carried shades to the BS 381C standard, that is the same palette used by the Royal Air Force across the Channel. Anyone building a Belgian machine reaches for British tones entirely legitimately, and the British abbreviations in the names of the individual bottles are not a mistake but a historical fact.

Inside you will find four shades: Dark Green, then Medium Sea Grey to BS 381C/637, Dark Sea Grey to BS 381C/638 and PRU Blue to BS 381C/636. The combination covers the upper camouflage, the undersides and the light finish of high-altitude reconnaissance machines.

Working with the set

The shades belong to a solvent-based range intended mainly for the airbrush. Lay them on in thin coats; each further one raises the depth without flooding the panel lines. The interval between coats is short, so you can manage the whole camouflage in one sitting.

Small accessories can be painted with a brush too, but on large areas the strokes remain visible. Close the bottles carefully, as the solvent evaporates quickly and what is left in an open bottle thickens.

Before starting work, stir the contents longer than is usual with water-thinnable paints. The pigment settles at the bottom and an unstirred bottle gives a paler result, which with two close grays shows up at once as a mismatch between neighboring panels.