McClelland Barclay Camouflage

Here's a link to some pix

Well, that's a turnabout on the old phrase, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with BS."

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Mad-Modeller wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@nextline.com:

dazzle them

Barclay is interesting in the effort to break up the outlines. In many ways it is very similar to the type of splinter measures used on ships later. I would love to get some insight on what they were thinking and if it was in any way related.

Thanks for the tips guys. Yes there are some extant photos, and the Squadron book on the Buffalo does list some color possibilities, but nothing I've seen yet is complete enough.

Barclay was a Naval Reserve Leuitenant Commander, and I believe he also designed some of the shipboard splinter camouflage schemes-it sure shows in his aircraft schemes, including a TBD and BT1 scheme-but he is most famous for his straight artwork, which includes a large body of WWII morale posters.

Steve

Those ship schemes actually have precursors from WWI.

Ron wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@rcn.com:

any way

Yeah. But the first thing I thought of when seeing a Barclay scheme was ship type splinter on a plane. If it's that obvious to me...

Frank

Barclay probably got it from Norman Wilkerson's drawings which were done for WWI ships and brought here during the war.

SUCCESS!

Persistance pays off. After repeated net searches using every possible set of search terms I could drag out of my poor, styrene fume soaked gray matter, I found a set of three views, in gray scale, of the Barclay scheme #1 (the really interesting one).

They certainly look like a match to the available photographs. Now to scale them and get to work.

If you want to check them out go to

Steve