British Grey Green Paint ?

article mentions a interior green-gray by White Ensign. Other sources speak of the color as British interior green: Testors makes that.

Pat

Xtracrylix XA1010

or, if you prefer enamel, Xtracolor X010 Humbrol 78 should provide a reasonable match. The equivalent FS number is FS34226.

Just be aware that the wheel wells of fighter aircraft such as the Spitfire and Hurricane were painted in the undersurface colour.

X010

hmmm, I was going to do the 1942 version with the black belly, wings, etc... they still said to use green. black? did the Hurricane go up at night?

Craig

It most certainly did. Night fighter Hurricanes were painted in a colour called Special Night. This was a very matt lampblack colour. Special Night did not weather well at all and quickly became very scruffy and blotchy. The paint would chip off areas that were subject to wear and tear. As the paint had a rough finish, it would hold any liquids which may have been spilled on it, so there is a great deal of scope for weathering. Incidentally the rough paint finish was found to affect aircraft performance.

Note that the aircraft in that video has been restored with modern paints and so it doesn't have the scruffy appearance that an operational aircraft would have.

super. sounds like the perfect opportunity to use my poor painting skills. blotchy, faded, peeling paint. whee.... Can I assume that flat black or a satin black will suffice?

Craig

I would use both flat and satin on different areas. Note also that the exhaust stains usually showed up on this scheme as a light grey.

As I mentioned before, Special Night was a very rough finish which affected the performance of the aircraft. It was also used on the undersurfaces of night bombers with an even greater effect due to the large areas involved.

One would have thought that a very flat black finish would have been ideal camouflage at night, but that turned out not to be the case. When caught in a searchlight beam, a flat finish turned out to be very visible indeed. Therefore an alternative finish known as Smooth Night was introduced in 1942 for night bombers. Smooth Night was a semi-gloss black which was much harder wearing. Smooth Night didn't wholly replace Special Night, however. Smooth Night was used on the undersurfaces of night bombers while Special Night continued to be used on the fuselgae sides.

A similar situation pertained on Coastal Command's maritime patrol aircraft. At first glance they appeared to by almost overall white, with just the upersurfaces of the wing and tailplane and the extreme upper decking of the fuselage in disruptive camouflage. However, the fuselage and nacelle sides were in matt white while the undersurfaces were in gloss white.

Special Night was also found to be unsuitable for night fighters. Hurricanes, Defiants, Blenheims and early marks of Beaufighter and Mosquito were painted in overall Special Night. However trials showed that night combat situations occurred above the clouds. On a moonlit night this meant that a flat black coloured fighter could be silhouetted against the sky and once again was very visible to the bomber crews. The trials showed that Medium Sea Grey was a far better colour. Night fighters were therefore painted in overall Medium Sea Grey with a disruptive pattern of Dark Green on the uppersurfaces. This scheme was introduced around the same time as the Smooth Night scheme. It was also used for some intruder aircraft and it remained in service well into the 1950s on Meteor and Venom night fighters. Incidentally, the Luftwaffe came to a similar conclusion with regard to their own night fighters. Ju 88 and He 219 aircraft were painted in overall RLM 76 with disruptive patterns of darker colours on the uppersurfaces.