Description

For those who are interested in aircraft camouflage, this is a book which will definitely pique your interest. Like the late war Luftwaffe, the early war years for the Allied air forces was one of a great deal of change when it comes to camouflage. The changing situation in the war and the need to establish colour requirements for the different theatres of operation often resulted in some rather interesting and often unique camouflage schemes.

We tend to think of Battle of Britain aircraft as being painted the same, but that is not the case. This is especially true when it comes to the undersides. The mis-interpretation of the requirements and the lack of available paints resulted in a wide variety of colours being used. This is equally true of aircraft headed to North Africa and for those being used over the oceans.

The author goes into great detail to explain why there were differences in these schemes and the illustrations of Jon Freeman give a good idea to what these schemes were. Thanks to the difficulty of interpreting colour from monochrome images, there is quite a bit of supposition and uncertainty when it comes to the actual shades in use. As a result, several of the schemes portrayed are as much an educated guess as a hard fact, but all are quite plausible.

This is a book that no dedicated scale modeller or enthusiast should be without.