Ditto with above Gents comments, my friend @maxw!

A wonderful photo indeed, my friend @maxw! Both questions are hard to be answered! Blue for the wheel covers might be justifiable...

You are really making a great history article here, Max @maxw
Thanks for sharing all these findings with us.

Great photo this: there's an "interesting" panel aft of the wing/fuselage join and what possibly appears to be a light centre fuselage? Also reinforcing panels outside of the lifting positions just forward of the tailplanes. Not sure what those long thin rectangles (access panels?) might be just inboard of both roundels though? All grist to the mill! And it's amazing what you can find if you're prepared to do a little digging!

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Very interesting article, Max @maxw
We are really blessed with all that information being available on the net.

Thanks Christopher, that’s the second confirmation of the lights, though I’d value your comment on the wingtip features given to me, that is that they are the positions of the retracted Hope landing light flares, see pictures below. My initial reaction was the same as yours, though if so I’m puzzled why no such access panels exist for the inboard interplane struts.

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Agreed Tom, but if there was a Ministry directive as Christopher is suggesting then the Gauntlets would have been delivered factory-fresh and anodized. It’s significant that 56 Squadron received their Gauntlets from a later batch so the time frame fits well compared with 19 Squadron for instance.

As a painter, a photographer, a researcher and a model maker George, I have trained myself to look very carefully at all my “subjects” and to overlook nothing. It always pays dividends.