RAF Bomber Command paint set

Night raids and the palette of RAF Bomber Command

Bomber Command flew in two completely different roles and had two different underside colors for them. Day and light machines wore the light shade of the sky, the heavy night bombers a deep black, which from 1939 covered the whole of the lower surfaces including the sides of the fuselage. On top, though, both had the same thing: a pair of dark earth brown and dark green.

The box goes further than the outer finish. It holds the gray-green paint of the cockpit interiors and the landing gear bays, which you will find on practically every British bomber of the war, as well as the red protective varnish of the fabric coverings, which shows through in the open spaces and without which the inside of a model looks empty.

• The dark earth brown and dark green of the upper surfaces
• The light shade of the sky for the underside of day machines
• The deep black of the lower surfaces of night bombers
• Medium Sea Grey, the base of the Mosquitos from the middle of 1942
• The gray-green of the interiors and the landing gear bays
• The red varnish of the fabric parts
• The bronze green of aircraft bombs

The last shade is a subtlety that is often forgotten: from the end of 1940 until 1964 British bombs had a prescribed green of their own, so the bomb bay is not to be sprayed with the same color as the airframe. Anyone who keeps to this detail gets a more credible result at once on a model with an open bomb bay.

The range is acrylic and is thinned with water, which on large models with a span of over half a meter shows in the consumption of thinner and in the smell during the work.