Hello James !
@jamesb

As always, it's good to hear from you. Thanks for commenting on the information I posted. I just wanted to clear the air a little and avoid further confusion with some information that was not 100 percent correct. I hope these documents I posted along with the explanations helped to do this.

Thanks again buddy !

Chuck,
@uscusn
You're absolutely correct about aircraft production during the War. Things are expedited as needed. Sometimes planes were even ordered right off the drawing board without a flying prototype !

By the way, your Typhoon jet and the G4M Betty are really looking good... I have been meaning to say this.

Stephen,

@stephen-w-towle

You're absolutely right about Edgar brooks. His name can be seen on the Airfix Mk Vb (kit #AO5125)Spitfire instructions on the very front page. He really knew his business ! I would not have been able to post this information if he didn't find it at the museum...

I remember reading about the British rubber products and how they were compared to the German items. You're absolutely correct about this. Thanks for bringing up a very valid point.

This may make it even harder to find a picture of these matts since they're probably no longer in existence anywhere. I'm sure they were too busy making planes to take too many photos during the process. Plus I also remember that taking pictures was forbidden unless prior approval was given. They were concerned with security.

All of these things combined may make it a very hard thing to find photographic proof of. But at least we have the matts mentioned in the documents...and that's good enough for me. When you combine this information with the photo of Curtiss using them when they were building Lend Lease P-40 planes for the British, it all comes together...

Another statement you made about the life expectancy of a wartime plane is dead on the money. This along with the reasons of being expedient, and using less raw materials that were hard to come by, is partly why this was done.

A prime example would be late War Japanese planes and the use of natural metal or unpainted aluminum on their planes.

Thank you for the comments !

Stellan,
@stellan

Yes it's true, they mentioned having 4 separate patterns ! But they didn't go into specific details of each. The way you described it with using mirror images and reversing the colors very well could have been a possibility.

But to be perfectly honest, I really don't know, and I don't want to lead anyone astray.

Thanks for the comments on the color photos. I mentioned earlier that these were of the same plane, but they are not. These Spitfires have a different plane letter. One plane looks like "T" for Tom and the other is "D" for David.

They are perfect examples of the finish look that was required when the planes left the factory. These would have probably deteriorated in time and with use.

Thanks again everyone for participating in this conversation.

Please stay tuned, as I have another update coming next, and I think you might like it... 🙂

Tonight's progress went even better than expected. Now having said this, I probably jinxed myself... Hope not, the deadline is getting closer.

Using this new method with home made masks, I was able to finish masking off the clipped wing Tamiya Mk Vb. Now it is ready to spray as seen here.

Next up was the Airfix Mk Vb.

It also received the same treatment and in no time it too was ready for spraying. Here it can be seen next to the Tamiya cousin.

In this next picture you will see the Airfix Mk V was first to be painted with the Middle Stone color.

Soon afterwards they both were done... The Tamiya clipped wing is on the left, Airfix on the right in this photo below. While the paint was drying I cleaned up the air brush.

The masking was removed, and it revealed this:

I'm very pleased with the results. I flipped the planes over so you can see the differences between the colors I decided to use on these planes. You'll see why later on.

Meanwhile here's how all of the Spitfires are looking at the moment.

Starting in the rear row from left to right:
Airfix Mk 1
Tamiya Mk 1
Tamiya Mk Vb

Bottom row, left to right:
Tamiya Mk 1
Tamiya Mk Vb... I still haven't decided how to paint this one.
Airfix Mk Vb

In this last photo, the planes have simply been flipped over to reveal the underside colors. They are in the same order. Hopefully tomorrow I can spray some clear Future acrylic on the rest of these, and apply some decals to two that were previously clear coated.

I'll post up progress as it happens, so please stay tuned.
Thanks for looking, and as always,
"Comments are encouraged'.

Those last 2 photographs really made me smile, Louis. It is a fantastic scene - I'm even excited about the one with no paint! The talk of rubber mats and masking has been a fascinating journey too. Like many on here I spent some time looking for a photo but for the reasons stated - secrecy and security - I guess they are very scarce! Anyway, after 220+ posts I'd say anyone using this as a reference will almost certainly find it impossible to build a bad Spitfire - and better still will have learned a ton of history!

Today was spent getting these last three builds ready to add decals. I wanted to get the clear sprayed on them so they could sit for a few days before I started adding the stickers...

I have always wanted to build a "Malta" Spitfire, and now is the perfect time to do it. I have been doing a lot of online research, talking to friends, and reading of books. From what I have found out, this is a mine field !

There are lots of thoughts and ideas about these planes. Some make sense, others ... well, not so much.

This is my idea, and I stress it's only an interpretation, on what I think some of these planes may have looked like. So please don't take this as gospel, as it's not...

George Beurling flew with 249 Squadron on Malta. This is where he found that his flying and shooting skills were most useful, as he didn't blend in well with fellow Squadron Mates from his previous assignments. He flew numerous Spitfires on Malta from what I have read, the 249 Squadron didn't really assign a plane to a pilot. They flew what was available. In fact, some Squadrons actually shared planes with others. (This reminds me of VMF-214 "Blacksheep" and VMF-122 in the Pacific sharing their Corsairs)

After a lot of digging, I decided I would build the Airfix Mk Vb as one of the planes that "Screwball" Beurling flew. I also wanted to pick a plane in which he scored in. The trick was finding a plane that was a Mk Vb... Most of his victories scored on Malta were done with a Mk Vc which was armed with 4 wing mounted cannons. On Malta the outboard cannons were often removed, and the barrel openings were covered.

Since the Airfix Spitfire is a Mark Vb with a single 20 MM cannon in each wing, I was rather limited on planes that I could model. From what I have found, he only scored in 3 different Vb's while on Malta. The rest were Mark Vc's...

Here are the three planes he flew and scored in that were a Spitfire Vb version.

EP-135
EP-706 (supposedly marked as "T-L" with either yellow or white letters).
EN-973

So I chose EP-706 as there was more information about this particular plane.

It has been said that most Spitfires were delivered to Malta in the typical desert scheme of Dark Earth and Middle Stone over Azure Blue undersides. Since most of the fighting was done over water, this color combination stood out like a sore thumb... some of these planes were given a hasty "Field applied" paint job to make them more suited for operations over water. Some planes had the lighter Middle Stone color painted over, while others received various shades of a locally brewed color that has been described as either a Gray or a Blue Gray. There are also reports of some planes being painted on board the aircraft carriers as they were en route for delivery to the island.

To be perfectly honest, who knows ? Now you see why this is a best guess approach.

and here's how I did mine...

I started with picking out a color. The one I decided on was FS 36118 "Gunship Gray", after some lengthy correspondence with Paul Barber,

@yellow10

I thinned the paint down considerably, and started giving the plane some very light coats. I wanted the base camouflage colors to show through the top coat.


From what I read, supplies were scarce on Malta due to the Germans effectively being able to blockade the island. They did have some ships that managed to "run the gauntlet", but this was often achieved at a heavy price with the loss of many ships and their crews.

Because of this, I reasoned these planes would have had just enough paint sprayed on them to tone down the desert paint camouflage. So that's what I did. You can see the underlying paint through the top coat. It is more prevalent in some areas more so than others.

Add in the wear factor of the harsh environment where they operated, and this makes sense to me.

Then I had to repaint the spinner, since I had it painted black to begin with... The pictures I found of 249 Squadron it appears that the spinners were not left black. This is only an observation of mine and not proven.

After I added the clear acrylic Future, (in preparation for the decals),
you could still see the base camouflage in some areas. This is exactly the look I was after...


Since I was spraying clear, I gave the Tamiya Clipped Wing Mk Vb several coats...

and the Tamiya Mk I received the treatment too...

Here they are together.

Remember when I mentioned that I had probably jinxed myself ?

Shortly after I took these pictures, I dropped the Malta Spit !

Luckily the damage was limited to knocking off the rudder, and chipping the paint when it landed tail first.

Hopefully this will be an easy fix... It could have been worse.

I plan on doing some more work on these later tonight.

Thanks for looking, and as usual,

"Comments are encouraged"

Take care.

Rubber mats or no rubber mats...how many photos of Spitfires being painted are there anyway? If they got repainted in the field or at service depots using spray guns there ought to be a couple of photos of this..?

Thanks for the links Stellan !

I have browsed numerous websites, and each time I read them over and over again, I gain something new from them. I have looked at most of these but I did find a few more interesting bits using the link you provided.

Thank you.

From what I have read the 249 Squadron on Malta quite possibly used white (or light gray) for the fuselage codes during the time that George Beurling was there. They possibly switched over to yellow after he left. This could be what is causing some of the confusion surrounding the colors.

I did run across these pictures and they show that all sorts of camouflage was used there. The first color picture

is from the Imperial War Museum and is described as:

AOC Malta, Air Vice Marshal Keith Park about to taxi out in his personal Supermarine Spitfire V to mark the opening of Malta's new airstrip at Safi, 15 May 1943.

What I find interesting here is that the undercarriage legs, inside of the gear doors and the wheels are all painted the same color as the underside of the plane. Occasionally the main gear legs were an aluminum silver color, as were the wheels. The wheels were sometimes left unpainted going from memory...

This second picture

is also color and is labelled as this:

Object description
Spitfire Mk VB Trop North Africa - Full caption to follow.

These photo shows some great colors that were used on Spitfires on Malta.

Sadly almost everything else is in black and white... but I did find this picture of a Spitfire from Malta that was reportedly copied from an original. Here it is shown with several Black and White pictures of the same plane. It has a yellow "X" on the fuselage as the plane code giving credence to the use of yellow lettering. The shade of the "X" is very similar when compared to the shade of the yellow surround on the fuselage insignia in the B & W photos.

There was some bantering back and forth about how the color picture had been colorized. While possible, I tend to think it was not as was claimed by the original owner who allowed the picture to be copied.

Like I mentioned at the very beginning, this is a modelling mine field, and lots of opinions are out there...

One can only take an educated "best guess" and run with it.

This next picture shows some of the color possibilities from this color chart. The color chip for "Sky Blue" has been removed and is shown as an empty white square. It also appears that someone has attempted to use a FS color standard to get an approximation of these colors. The FS numbers are shown in the bottom corner of each chip.

This next picture below is also from the IWM. Here's the caption that goes with it.

Object description

Supermarine Spitfire Mark VB(T), EP257, being operated by No. 126 Squadron RAF, taxies along the dusty perimeter track at Luqa, Malta, for a sortie. A member of the groundcrew runs alongside to warn the pilot of obstacles ahead. There was considerable interchange of aircraft between squadrons on Malta at this time, and EP257 shows evidence of hastily painted-out identification letters.

Here we have a reference to the planes being used by other Squadrons. It also appears to more of a single monotone upper color. This makes the freshly painted areas to cover up previous Squadron codes more obvious.

Here is another Black and White picture that shows a Spitfire "T-B BP-983"in what is probably Desert Colors. It is captioned as a Malta Spit. The fuselage code letters on this one look to be lighter that the yellow surround, and give credence to the possibility that they are either light gray or off white.

This one is also supposed to be a 249 Spitfire coded "T-M". It looks to be in a darker color, but it also has a little shine to it. The letters "T M" are definitely darker than the white center circle of the fuselage roundel. They appear to be very similar in shade to the outer yellow roundel, but possibly not an exact match. This plane also has a very sharp demarcation line between the colors used on the top side where it meets the underside color at the rear lower fuselage.

Trying to figure out "exact colors" from Black and White pictures is almost impossible.

However, these Spitfires are also from the 249 Squadron. There seems to be a mix of paint schemes used. The middle Spit looks to be darker. The closest Spit looks like it has a black spinner as it closely matches the propeller blades. The spinner does not match the red portions shown in the center of the underwing roundel or fin flash. The interesting thing here is that the fuselage codes are definitely not white. They have to be a shade of light gray or yellow...

Yet another 249 Squadron photo. These Spitfires look to be much darker than the typical Desert Scheme. Here again you can see the fuselage letters are not white or yellow, but another light shade.

I find these next two pictures interesting as well... This Dark Spitfire is supposed to be a 689 Squadron Spitfire.
But I have not found any reference to there ever being a 689 Squadron ! I have found a PR Unit that was based at Malta for a while, but it is the 683 Squadron. 683 Squadron was formed from the "B" Flight of 69 Squadron, so maybe it's a typographical error... Who knows ? Look at the gents sitting on the tail during the engine run up testing... I'm glad the wheels are chocked ! If this is indeed a PR Spitfire, it would make sense that it would look more Dark Blue.

Now here's a really strange one... This is a clipped wing Mk Vb, and is claimed to be on Malta. I didn't know that this "clipped wing" type was there.

It's supposed to be a Spitfire Mk Vb, serial number EP-829, and was flown by Squadron Leader John Joseph Lynch with 249 Squadron on Malta in 1943. This will get a closer look at a later time...

As far as finding any photographs of anyone painting a Spitfire, so far I have not found a single one ! They are very rare apparently... I have looked at what pictures I could find of the planes being assembled in factories, and so far... not a single one has popped up for me.

Thanks for the response.

This is some great research information Louis. Really awesome! Well done.
@lgardner

Tonight I managed to get the decals added on the first of the few...

This one is the new tool Airfix Mk I.

The decals worked rather well, (except for the very center of the upper wing roundel). I used some "Future" as a setting solution to help eliminate silvering where the clear carrier film was. I used a little amount of solvaset on the very center of the upper wing roundels after these pictures were taken. The decal didn't want to snuggle down very well since there's a small protrusion under it, that looks to be a part of the outer .303 access panel. Hopefully tomorrow morning it will look better.

The underside even came with additional decals to add some stencils in white lettering on the underside of the Black wing.

The instructions stated this about these white stencils.
Note: Most aircraft had stencils over painted on black wing, but a few were repainted in white and these are provided as optional items.

I don't know if these were added back to the plane I'm building or not. I just did it because I liked how they looked. I was not able to find a picture that shows this feature on "H" for Harry.

Possibly tomorrow night I can add the decals to the other two Tamiya Mk I's.

Calling it a night.

As usual,
Comments are encouraged.

Thanks for looking and following along...