PRU pink spitfires

cheers for the heads up Maestro

The Spitfire type G (PR Ig), later called PR VII was the final photo-recon version of the Spitfire Mk I. It was designed to take the low-level reconnaissance role, below the cloud base. These missions were called 'dicing.' Some retained the standard day fighter scheme but the majority were painted pink. Described as a vary pale pink, barely off-white, it was designed to conceal them as they flew just below the cloud base. However, the colour also made them easy to see from above if there was no cloud cover. Pilots were ordered to abandon the mission is there was not sufficient cloud over the target. In particular they were used for monitoring activity in the French ports and the continuous daily watch of the German battle cruisers at Brest. For the latter they were based at St. Eval in Cornwall.

Pink was used again on FR IXs of 16 Squadron in France Belgium/Holland and Germany during late 1944 and 1945. It seems this was not the same pink used earlier, and may have been mixed on site from white and roundel red. There are some wartime colour photographs of them in Belgium but they suffer from the colour casts and selective fading of early colour film. I have also seen the colour of the restored Spitfire criticised for being too dark or too pink. So whatever pink you choose there will probably be someone that will say it is not quite right. At the end of the day it is mostly opinion and very little physical evidence.

thanks antoni i know it will be a little hit and miss regerding the actual colour.

i'm going to go for a very pale pink, the black and white pics i've got from the a.price book make the colour look almost white so will base the paint on that.

i'll post the pics from the spitfire story in this thread to show what i mean and also how the paint scheme realy worked !

for those not familiar with the pink PRU scheme here's some pics
it depicts the scheme included in the kit i've ordered

this model was done by Jim Kiker and is on hyperscale

One small detail. The serial number was probably roundel red not black. There was also an IFF aerial under the starbord wing. See:

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aircraft-requests/spitfire-fr-ix-iff-radios-carried-16552.html

Antoni is right there Karl. The early colour, which you won't be using, WAS a very pale pink; as I mentioned, an off-white, the 'off' being pink. At that time, there was also a very short-lived, experimental, very pale green colour tried, on only two airframes, AFAIK. The colour shown on the very nice model you posted, if ever so slightly lighter, would be more like this earlier colour.
The B&W pics in Price's book, make the pink look lighter than it actually was, possibly through overexposure of the original film negative, whereas the colour shots that appeared on the rear dust jacket of the first edition of the book, although, as Antoni pointed out, suffering from slight fading, and probably degradation of the colour couplers and dyes, is closer to the actual colour.
Cutting a very long story short, when I was still with the 'Big Yellow Box', I analysed these images, and found that the half-tone reproductions of the B&W pics were a little lacking in their dot-percentage range, resulting in a slight loss of contrast across the full range of tones. A similar exercise with the colour pics showed that they were probably from transparencies, and that, although possibly overexposed, and showing evidence of slight fading, the colour reproduction had not suffered too much. In other words, the colour shots were reasonably close to the actual colour tones. This was confirmed by a then neighbour, who had served as an armourer on the Squadron, at the time the pics were taken at Melsbroek, Belgium.
If you haven't got the colour shots in your copy of the book, let me know, and I'll scan and send them.
If you base the finish somewhere between the original pics, and that shown on the restored aircraft, you shouldn't be far wrong.