Looking for a bit of help on the above topic. I am currently bulding a Tamiya Spit as Brian Lanes ride. All I have are a couple of generic sheets of roundels and squadron codes to roll with. The roundels sheet tells what the actual size of the roundel would have been. I was wondering what size roundels would have been used on this aircraft? The sides of the fuse are huge, and what about the upper and lower wing rondels? Kind of stuck on this part as I want it to be as close to right as I can get it but I am ready to roll this one of the workbench as its been there way too long. Any help is very much appreciated!!
It would be more helpful if you gave the serial number and or codes of the Spitfire. I presume you mean P9386/QV*K with the yellow spinner?
Upper wings would be the standard Type B (Blue and Red) 56 inch roundels.
During 1940 there was some variation in the size and appearance of the fuselage and under wing roundels due to changing orders and different interpretations of those orders. For P9386 the fuselage roundels are the standard 35 inch A type (Red, White and Blue) to which have been added a Yellow outer ring making the roundel 49 inches in diameter altogether.
The under wing roundels show the most variation in both size and position. For P9386 they look like they are 25 inches Type A (Red, White and Blue) positioned near the wing tips.
Antoni, you correct that I am building P9386. You are a wealth of information and a tremendous help! Thank you for taking the time to post this info!!
One other note, I am going to assume based on the sole plate I have of this craft that the sqaudron codes were 30" and the striping on the tail was the 7". Does that sound correct to you?
On Target Profiles 4 Supermarine Spitfire Mk 1 to VI in the European Theatre of Operations gives the codes as approximately 27 inches. It also interprets the letter ‘K’ as white or light grey.
Code letter size during this period varied, so photo’s are your best reference. Before the war, tests were conducted to determine the best size for fuselage codes. Final anylysis came up with 48" tall with 6" wide strokes, and spacing to be the same as the individual stroke (6"). Obviously this was huge for smaller aircraft, so it was left up to individual squadrons to shrink down to an appropriate size in a proportionate manner.
There is only one known photo of this aircraft,
and a larger version here,
… it’s possible the lone identification letter appears white due to increase of brightness/contrast of the photo. If it indeed was white, it certainly wasn’t following Air Ministry regulations. For the codes’ height, if you compare to the roundel size up to the blue portion (35") it does look to be slightly under 30". Antoni’s suggestion of 27" is quite accurate when you take an actual ruler to the photo, but have to take into consideration the curvature of the fuselage.
On the back cover of Paul Lucus publication on the BoB subject, there is a line drawing of a 610 Sqn Spitfire (QV-I), and includes some measurements. Codes height is given as approx. 30" and serial codes 8". The fin flash is indicated as having 7" wide stripes, for a total width of 21".
HTH
regards,
Jack
The captions in the Paul Lucas book (Camouflage and Markings No 2 Guideline Publications) make no mention of size of the markings. In that respect On Target Profiles differs as all the profiles are captioned with the dimensions of the markings indicating that the authors have made some effort to estimate them. The continual use of the word approximate indicates that the size cannot be determined exactly. 30 inches seems to be a cliché used by authors you have not taken the trouble to estimate the size and appears about right when you look at them. For this reason 30 inch codes should not be taken at face value.
In On Target 4 the estimate is the same for X4474 OVI, 27 inches. For R6776 QVH (noticeably slightly larger codes) the estimate is 30 inches.
As for the white letter K, it depends on what version of the photograph you are looking at. It maybe that an actual print of the photograph shows more contrast between the letters than is found in book. However, I remain unconvinced that it was white if for no other reason than if there was no MSG available it would be a very simple matter to mix some black and white to get a close match.
8 inches is the standard height for serial numbers, style and font varied with manufacturer.
Wow, such great info!! The decal set that I have has 24" and 30". I think I will use the 30" ones on this build and just make them all sky.
Codes were Medium Sea Grey. Sky was not used for codes until the introduction of the Day Fighter Scheme, Ocean Grey/Dark Green/Medium Sea Grey under surfaces.
Hmm, I have the Xtradecals sheets in Sky and Sea Grey and looking at the plate in the Osprey Spitfire Mark I/II Aces 1939-1941, it looks much lighter than the Sea Grey sheet. I guess that’s not to say that the Xtradecals aren’t printed a little on the dark side though.
I used Xtradecal decals for the 92nd Squadron Spitfire I just finished. I agree they seemed dark before application but once all was said and done, They looked fine. Here’s the final result.
That is one fine Spitfire!! I went ahead and applied them. I think it wil be fine when all said and done.