RAF Coastal Command & RN FAA Paint Set

Patrol aviation over the Atlantic

RAF Coastal Command had a thankless task during the war: to fly for hours over empty water and watch over convoys. Its machines therefore carried different colors from the land-based air force, because they were camouflaged against the surface of the sea and against the sky, not against the landscape. The carrier aviation of the Royal Navy followed the same logic and this lineup covers both.

The development of the scheme over time

The upper surfaces were covered by a dark sea gray and a dark slate gray, which together made up the two-color naval pattern. On flying boats it was used from the beginning, and on the other machines it took hold only during 1941. The lower surfaces went through the most conspicuous change: at first they carried a light gray, from roughly the middle of 1940 a greenish shade came in, and from 1941 white began to be used on the large machines.

• The dark sea gray of the upper surfaces, from 1944 overall
• The dark slate gray as the second color of the two-color pattern
• The light gray of the lower surfaces used until roughly September 1940
• The greenish shade of the underside from the middle of 1940
• The white of the lower surfaces of the large machines from 1941
• The gray-green of cockpits, the standard for the whole war

The white underside is the most interesting item for a modeler. It came out of the practical finding that a dark aircraft is seen against the sky before it finds a submarine itself. A lighter machine managed to come closer, and that decided the success of the whole patrol. From 1944 the division of colors was then unified across the whole command.