RAF colors Bomber & Training Air Command 1939-1945

From night raids to training airfields

British bomber aviation flew mostly at night, and its machines matched that. Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Lancasters carried the same brown and green camouflage above as day aircraft, but their undersides were matte black so that searchlights would not catch them over the target. Alongside them, the same command also included training units, whose machines were on the contrary meant to be as conspicuous as possible, so that they could easily be spotted in the air.

The make-up of these eight follows from exactly that. You will find in it dark brown and dark green for the upper surfaces, matte black for the underside of a night bomber, Medium Sea Grey, Sky Type S, a green tone, a gray-green for the interior and the saturated yellow that training aircraft carried over large areas of the airframe. One set therefore covers two very different faces of the same air force.

What to watch out for

Matte black on a large underside gives away every unevenness in the filling, so it pays to sand the surface and spray a primer beforehand. The yellow, by contrast, needs a light undercoat; otherwise it will not be a saturated tone even after a third coat. The paints are acrylic, thinned with water or with the thinner of the same range, and in an airbrush they work best at lower pressure.

The boundary between the brown and the green was prescribed on bombers just as it was on fighters, so here too a stencil of paper or thin card laid tight against the surface proves itself. The set contains paints only, with no model, decals or masking aids.