Peter Allen (Flitzer) puts away his RLM colours and turns his attention to the RAF for his latest set of excellent profiles.

Link to Item

If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

The profile of the Polish Spitfire looks suspiciously like it is meant to be the well known P7855 'Krysia' of 315 Squadron. If so, it was a Mk IIa (315 Squadron only ever had four Mk 1s). The Squadron codes were PK not KP. (I don't have a an encyclopaedic knowledge of squadron codes but I don't think any that were equipped with Spitfires used KP?) The serial number was in very small lettering close to the spine of the fuselage. The sky band was painted around it. The individual letter K was extended with small medium grey letters at the base to form the girl's name KRYSIA. Other Spitfires in the squadron had similar inscriptions P8545 F - FELA (Mk IIb), P8387 H - HALINA, P8528 J - JANKA, P8648 M - MARYSIA (Mk IIb). Under the cockpit was the inscription 'EAST INDIA SQUADRON' from is service with 65 Squadron in 1941. Before joining 315 Squadron it served with 308 (Polish) Squadron as ZF-B.

If I am wrong I apologise in advance.

Hi Antoni..

thanks for your comments.....you may well be right
I knew I should have asked you first :-)

The illustration is based on what refs I could find at the time of doing them and as these are of actual aircraft I sort of expected inaccuracies to be spotted. So I suppose the best I can do is say..."Please regard all my profiles as representative and I'll try and do better next time" :-) :-)

Now I know why I always did Luft 46 stuff before :-) :-)

Cheers
Peter
:-)

Hi again Antoni,

If you have any clear refs or know sites that have such ref materials please let me have them and I'll do an updated profile.
As you can see its a steep learning curve for me... :-)

Many thanks
Peter
:-)

Hi Antoni

According to John Rawlings' "Fighter Squadrons Of The RAF" (MacDonald & Co, 1969) you're quite correct. It lists the following:

KP - 409 Sqn. Defiant Mk1, Beaufighter IIf, VIf, Mosquito XIII. 1941-45
PK - 315 Sqn. Hurricane Mk 1, Spitfire MK II, V, IX, Mustang III. 1941-46

All the best

Rowan

Great feature. I especially like the Typhoon in North African colours. The Whirlwind is great too. When can we expect another installement?

Ross

Books:

Osprey's Polish Aces of WWII
Mushroom Publications 315 squadron
Jerzy B Cynk's The Polish Air Force at War The Official History (Not much change out £100 for both volumes and gave the postman a hernia.)

http://www.geocities.com/skrzydla/
Follow my instruction or you'll never find it. Click on 315 squadron then 1941. Find Oct 21 and click see photos. In English but there is some kind of limit on the amount data so after a while you get thrown off and cannot go back for an hour.

These are Polish only.
http://www.roman.biskupin.wroc.pl/rafmenu.html
http://www.psr.netfriend.org/mysliwcy/

Peter, stunning, I love 'em more, much more please.
Mal

Hi again

Antoni:
Many thanks for your help, it's truly appreciated.
As soon as I can gather all the necessary I'll update the Polish Spit.
And Rowan's kindly offered to wave his magic wand and correct the set when I complete the 2 plates in question.

Ross and Mal
There are a few more profile sets in the pipeline but yes I do intend at least an additional set of British WW2 planes.
As long as I can get the right refs I'll do a profile. Antoni's points have proved what I was worried about when I embarked on this new project direction. The point being; finding good clear refs especially for the graphic elements is crucial for actual aircraft. The problem in searching the net from here in Saudi is that so many sites are banned, even innocent ones, so its not always as easy as the "real" world.
You may think searching for something like Polish Spitfire would seem innocent enough...but not here...lol......So...



Bye for now
Cheers
Peter

:-)

I'm not an expert on codes, but I do know Art.... excellent job on the drawings/paintings. Looking forward to seeing more.

Hi again..

Many thanks Dave.... the cheque's in the post

I have re-done the Polish Spit thanks to Antoni and his excellent refs.
I hope I got it right this time... :-)
To be honest the Polish Spit was the only one I didn't have at least reasonable refs for, plus me and my dislexia getting the P's and K's mixed up...
So I'll fire the new version off to Merlin's Tower tomorrow.

mANY THANKS AGAIN
cHEERS
Peter
:-)

Hi Peter,
Great artwork, especially the colours. Unfortunately, for Whirlwind P6978, HE-Z you've fallen into the trap that many have fallen into before. There was no way that P6974 took part in the Dieppe operation!

According to Victor Bingham 'Whirlwind - The Westland Whirwind Fighter' (Airlife 1987) P6974 had been damaged in May 1941 and, after being listed with two MUs finally returned to 263 Sqn. 27/2/43 (21 months!).

The possibility is the special markings applied to an exercise called Operation Starkey, September 1943. (in the listings for 'Operation Spartan', March 1943, 263 Sqn. aren't listed as being involved.) There were no special markings used for the aircraft involved in the Dieppe operations.

Keep up the great work!

Jeff W.

In early July 1942 white bands on top the cowlings and tailplane were applied to aircraft involved in Operation ‘Rutter’. These can be seen very clearly in a photograph taken of Spitfire BM579 FN.B of 331 (Norwegian) Sqn. This operation was abandoned but the markings are often erroneously associated with Operation ‘Jubilee’ (the notorious raid on Dieppe on 19th August) which took place at a similar time and had the same objective, Dieppe. The Polish No 1 Wing took part in Operation ‘Jubilee’ and moved to Croydon and Redhill at the beginning of July for a week while waiting for ‘Jubilee’ to start. Apart from one Roadstead by 12 Spitfires they spent their time with formation exercises. While at Croydon the Poles began to look for ways to facilitate the instant identification of ‘friendly’ aircraft and came up with the idea of painting the noses of their Spitfires with white stripes. I don’t know if this idea came from Operation ‘Rutter ‘ but as the markings are similar it could well have given them the idea. These white markings were experimentally applied to W/Cdr Witorzeńc’s Spitfire Vb AA853 WX.C. A few other aircraft were marked with chalk in preparation for painting but the scheme was abandoned apparently because of lack official approval from the RAF. Several photographs of AA853 were taken on 6th July with the white stripes. I think it is these photographs that are the real cause of the mistaken belief that special markings were used on Operation ‘Jubilee’ aircraft. I don’t know when the white stripes were removed but I think it unlikely that they were still there in the middle of August so there is only a very faint possibility that this was the one and only aircraft in the operation that bore special markings.

In early 1943 for Exercise ‘Spartan’ wide white bands along the forward fuselage and black undersides of port wings were used as special markings. In September 1943 Operation ‘Starkey’ markings were black-and-white bands applied to outer wings on the top and bottom, similar to those used for the Normandy landings.

Hi and thanks for the info Jeff and Antoni.
Very interesting stuff. Which I will certainly take into consideration the next time.

But, no I didn't fall into the trap. The trap fell on me :-) .

However, even if I had had this information before I did the proile I probably would have done it anyway, as it, to me at least, looks great on the more unusual side of things.
So let it be an example of how it might have looked IF it had done the Dieppe.

:-) Plus where were you when I asked for info on various aircraft :-) :-) :-) :-) ...

In the meantime the corrected Polish Spit is on its way....

Cheers and thanks again
Peter
:-)

Hi all

The new Spitfire profiles are safely added - and the old ones are burned, slashed, trodden-on and otherwise hideously mutilated... i.e. I deleted them. :-)

All the best

Rowan

:-) :-) Where was I? On the other side of the world :-) . My excuse is I only joined Aeroscale/Armorama a few weeks ago and I probably didn't see your help request... Never mind, P6978 wore those striking markings at some time in it's life, so, should I lay my hands on a Classic Airframes example again, I'll be building HE-Z.
(These days I'm mostly building wheeled and tracked ground vehicles so i'm over at A...a - still be glad to help the aeronauts over here though :-) )

Cheers again
Jeff W.

Many thanks Jeff,

I may well take up your kind offer in the future.

I do kind of try to look for the more unusual or lesser known examples of aircraft, which in itself reduces the chances of finding accurate refs.
Going for a more well known plane usually means its been profiled to the max anyway.

Cheers and thanks again, its appreciated.

Peter
:-)