Hawker Hurricane Mk.1 Trop

Bart Goesaert
rather intriguing camo, but well applied... nice build

James Duff
Thank you Bart, it is retrospectively nick-named a "spaghetti" scheme - some squadrons in North Africa had this mottling applied to frontal surfaces by local maintenance units.

gorby
Looks good James. Not seen this camo before.

James Duff
Thanks Gorbygould 🙂 Here's a link to a photograph of the real thing: [img1]

It's otherwise a standard RAF desert scheme of Middle Stone and Dark Earth over Azure Blue.

Bart Goesaert
it seems, but the weird thing to me is the leading edge that has a complete part of the azure blue underside. The Italians did it vice versa, they painted the lower wing with a part of the camo for some reason. Also the azure blue on the nose is something that you don't see a lot.

gorby
Very interesting James. It's good to learn something new every day. 🙂

James Duff
Some drawings / art work show the base colour for the spaghetti as Azure but I personally believe that is wrong. Other theories have it as a sandy colour, but the original instructions called for aluminium and many other photographs of similar implementations on other Hurricanes show a reflective metallic looking surface, so I went for aluminium too. Numerous colours are theorised for the mottling itself - I ended up entrusting the diary of an Australian pilot who made an entry about aircraft received by his squadron that day - using a bit of reasoning, I figured the blue may have been lightened roundel blue and the purple may have been the British army colour in use in theatre at that time (or possible roundel blue mixed with roundel red I suppose?)
[img1]
[img2]

3squadron.org.au/subpages/jackson2.htm
Quote:

"24/1/41 Took delivery of six Hurricanes, and aren't they beauties! The new type of mottled blue, grey and purple camouflage - on the nose, leading edges of wings and front surfaces - looks most peculiar."

As for the flashes on the fuselage, nobody really knows what colour they were either. Some believe Azure, others sandy yellow. I chose Azure because they looked nice.