RAF WWII Insignia colours

Tools, Techniques, and Reference Materials Painting and airbrushing
1

My preparation continues for the Mk.1 Lancaster S-Sugar.

I have come across a paint company that have in their paints RAF Insignia paints called RAF Marking RED, Yellow and Blue.

http://mrpaint.sk/farby/lietadla/RAF

I bought some from a UK stockist and sacrificed some spoons to the great white plastic spoon paint goddess. The paints are acrylic enamel, the same kind that AK Xtreme metal and it is almost an ink consistence, again like the AK stuff and sprays well and smooth at 20psi.

My comparison was the cartograf decals from the Lancaster kit and after testing I went and bought some different blue (I also went and bought some German RAL 7028 variant paints to put against my chipset… I’m curious!)

So I have ended up with two blues. BS 381c 105 Oxford blue which I think SHOULD be the correct insignis colour and the BS 381c 106 Marking blue, which is labelled RAF WWII Marking Blue.

I am interested in what you guys out there think as I am leaning to the BS 105. I am happy with the red and yellow as they look a good solid match.

They don’t dry matt though, unless I didn’t shake the bottles properly and It took some paint to get full depth. Not cheap at £4.99 a bottle, but with a clear matt coat on top should look good.

James

2

The yellow and red look spot on, the blues are a bit off maybe a mix of the two would get the correct look or maybe just a flat coat on the 105 will tone it down some?

3

The 106 looks to be too green to me but could be angle and lighting

4

105 looks pretty close but maybe needs to be a bit darker. Then again live and in person it may look just right. 106 looks like it would work if you were going for a faded look but then you’d need to adjust the red and yellow. The main thing is if it looks good to you and satifies your eye that’s all that really matters.

5

Don’t have any of those paints, but Paul Lucus, who has done research on RAF subject matter, gives the following FS values as close approximates:

ID Red 1937-1947 = fs 30109

ID Blue 1937-1947 = fs 35048

ID Yellow " - " = fs 33538

While back I put a little chart together using RBG values based on the FS colorserver images. The units 7,10, 15 are just manipulation of the colour percentages in terms of decreasing the intensity (scale effect?):

regards,

Jack