RAF camo, hard or soft edge?

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
1

Hello everybody ,I have a few RAF WW2 projects
to do and was wondering if the camo was hard
or soft edged.
From what little pictures I have they seem to be both.
If so what are the guidlines?Early war,Late war?

the aircraft on the production line include
a hurricane,mosquito ,raf mustang ,lancaster and a gladiator.
I am not going to do them all at once or one after another,
but I have them on the shelf awaiting their turn.

A big thanks to all in advance!

2

Obiwan, I remember reading that RAF camo was applied with the help of shaped rubber mats, which would therefore give a hard edge.

Whether this changed during the course of the war I do not know, but I would imagaine that field applied schemes might well be soft edged.

Best bet, find a photo of your subject.

Karl

3

thanks Karl ,I didn’t know about the mats .I’ll have to hunt down those
photos

4

Good question Obiwan. I’ve built a number of 1/72 WWII RAF planes and all of them have hard edge camouflage because back then I read somewhere that in 1/72 scale soft edge will not be distinct anymore, and if it does it’ll be already off-scale. Still, It would be nice to know if it is really hard of soft. Hope somebody can enlighten us on this.

5

I like kj200 read somewhere about British camo patterns being applied with rubber mats. I wish I could rember the source but alas CRS has taken its toll.

6

Try this site. For RAF types, this has to be the best. http://www.rafweb.org/Menu.htm

Lou

7

Ive seen that in the web for the rubber mats. And they asked about that from a worker person who painted it! And they said " What rubber mats?"
You just paint it. Its fast with out the rubber mat.

PS… I used do to the paint in the 80’s (European Camo to a Grey camo) for the F-4 E/G from George AFB. Its very fast, real fast you could do about 2 or 3 planes a day.

8

If you kook at photos of RAF WW2 AC, most of the diruptive camo has a very slight, if any, feathered edge. The very soft edges occasionally seen was probably applied as field repair. By the time you scale that down to 1/72 or even 1/48, the demarcations would be fairly sharp.

9

rjkplasticmod i’m with you there…unless we’re talking extreme luftwaffe mottle, pretty much everything in 1/48 is going to be hard edged.
regards,
nick

10

I am sure that in the factory a “mask” of some sort was used but bar in mind that the airframe was painted in sections - i.e the aircraft was not assembled and therefore there had to be some “pattern” to follow. Otherwise I subscribe to the view that a hard edge if favoured for the reasons stated above. I suspect that there were variations between aircraft - because of the need to get them built quickly.

11

I like to put a soft edge on my camo just out of personal preference, but it takes a lot of spraying before I’m happy with it! I’ve seen a lot of photo’s of RAF warbirds and to my mind it really does depend on the paticular aircrft you are going to build, if you are lucky enough to have a picture in the first place!

12

Thanks for all the replies ,I’ll take them into consideration.
And also keep staring at the pictures.

13

If you can get hold of a copy of the official side photo of the Typhoon night fighter prototype (there’s one in Typhoon & Tempest at War) it is clear that there is a slightly soft edge to the camoflage, though unlikely to show up significantly in our scales. The point of interest though is the wing leading edge near the tip, where there is a VERY gash bit of spraywork indeed, and this on a factory fresh prototype! Just imagine what the mass produced finishes with all the pressures of time must have yielded