Question one: Were the car door version1B's still in squadron service (other than training squadrons) during and in the days following D-Day. The aircraft I intend modeling, R7752 was taken on charge by N. 609 Squadron in April of 1942 and 609 Squadron basically followed the allies across the continent to Germany but would they have still be using some of the car door variants ?

Question two: Very early on Typhoons were given identification stripes to prevent them from being mistaken by friendly forces as FW-190's. These were similar to but different from the invasion stripes added to aircraft on the eve of D-Day. Is it safe to assume that these stripes would have been left as is and not repainted to match the prescribed D-Day markings ?

Thanks in advance for any help with these questions.

Gary B

Hi Gary,

R7752 was stripped for parts in August 1943.

It was initially Paul Richey's mount, then famously Roland Beamont's, then Alec Ingle (all Sqn Ldrs of 609). It was transferred to 56 Sqn in July 1943, before going back to Hawkers for breaking in August. I have a completely comprehensive magazine article of all markings worn by PR-G while Beamont was Sqn Ldr of 609- it has 7 versions, all with 3-views, and includes one with a Sky tail (yes, the entire tail), a white nose, one with yellow ID stripes, etc. The article is by Chris Thomas, and was published in Model Aircraft Monthly in June 2006. Message me your email address if you would like a copy.

There was at least one car-door Typhoon used in D-Day stripes, I can dig out a reference and maybe a photo if you are interested. No, the Typhoon underwing markings were not retained. The order to remove them is dated 7th Feb 1944. They look quite different to D-Day stripes (only on the underside of the wings, for a start), and had 4 black stripes per wing instead of the two for fighter D-Day markings.

Hi Ben,

Thanks for that, I suspected as much. If it's not too much trouble I would like to see a photo of the car door version in invasion stripes or where I might find such. I had hoped to build this for a group build and one of the specifications is that it was in service during or immediately after D-Day.

Cheers,

Gary

Hello again Gary,

Here is a photo taken of page 600 of 2nd Tactical Airforce Vol. 4 by Christopher Shores and Chris Thomas.




There was a thread discussing this on Britmodeller:
http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=52400

Hope that helps,


Ben

Thank you very much for that, it will be most helpful.

Cheers !

Gary