DH.9A Ninak

[BLOWHARD]

Yes Skyraider, they did do that sometimes. But you'll notice how light the blue on the flash is, the section in the read area would be lighter I'd think. Or grey...

[Skyraider3D]

But you'll notice how light the blue on the flash is, the section in the read area would be lighter I'd think. Or grey...

Well evidently it's all grey in the photo

Nothing less reliable than reading brightness values off a rudder on a black and white photo. I wasn't sure if the red-blue switch was an existing practise at all, but if it was then I am 99.9% sure this is what they done. None of the brightness values look odd to me. And depending on the type of film used the red can either be lighter or be darker than the blue.

[BLOWHARD]

What I meant was the blue of the flash and the blue numbers would be near the same value but all of the lettering looks darker than the blue flash. In almost every case, RFC/early RAF marking the blue is always the lightest color...excepting the white of course. Sometimes the blue does look pretty near white. I don't think I've ever seen a Brit plane from WW1 with the red looking lighter. I'm not saying it doesn't ever look lighter, but in general red is darker and I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that you'd be hard pressed to find a WW1 British plane with the red appearing lighter than the blue. But just my 2 cents

Not this this photo has anything to do with anything, but it's a fun ortho film example-
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h5Q1HMsMEt...8+en+vuelo.jpg
Notice how light the blue is in direct sunlight and how much darker it is in the shadows

[inkworm]

I've not come across any examples of RFC/RAF serials in colours on the tail of aircraft, the convention as we all know was normally either white or black with a white outline. However the tonal values of the 3 and 6 are marginally lighter than the rest even though the 3 is against the white which would imply different colours.

But the caption that came with the photo on the wingnut site says the serial under the fuselage by the tail was doctored for propaganda/intelligence purposes so there is a slim chance the tail numbers have been tweaked though unlikely.

Meanwhile something a bit silly.

[Skyraider3D]

As your photo example shows, contrast on the blue is very light dependent. Near-white in light and much darker in shadow. If you look closely, you see the "3" appears to be darker at the top where it has a bit of "shadow" because of the curvature of the fabric, while at the bottom it gets closer to white again. With this it appears to behave similarly to the blue colour, which is very noticable towards the bottom, but fades to white at the top of the rudder.

I wasn't aware there was such a practise to paint serials in red-blue so my original suggestion was just a guess. But if this indeed did happen, this is likely to be an example.


Meanwhile liking your D-Day bird. Now a Desert Storm one please?
That big square nose begs for a naked lady or a shark mouth...!

[JMSmith]

its wrong!!!!!!!

since when did they have fighter bands on bombers

[Skyraider3D]

Frank Mitchell pictures - Ch 5 May 1944 - D Day preparation

[JMSmith]

no ronnie,

the SKY fighter band not the invasion stripes

[inkworm]

ok so I just dumped in some markings from a Tiffy that was handy, will do the other scheme as well. Will look at the other scheme in detail layer but thanks.

[Skyraider3D]

Doh, I didn't read well.
But yes, the Tiffy is effectively a bomber.

Poor safe, I know...