This is a heads up on, coincidentally, three new texture sets for the Spitfire prototype K5054 now up at Avsim.com and Flightsim.com, named: spit1-1.zip, spit1-2.zip and spit1-3.zip. They’re a direct result of further research and a great A2A forum exchange.
The repaints show the unpainted aircraft as it was on its first flight, in the classic pale blue-grey it wore for its first public appearance at the Hendon RAF Pageant in June 1936 – together with the customary “clean” (here, alternative) livery in which it appeared through 1936/7 – and in the Type A Camouflage it wore through 1938/9 to the beginning of the war.
The first two repaints include slightly reworked, “cleaner,” VCs as befits a new aircraft – done with the nervousness of a museum curator cleaning up a piece of art! – along with metal spinners and wooden props (again, please see README Note).
With no evidence for the previous “three textures” release colours (the Duck Egg Blue, Dove Grey and Sky Blue liveries), not wanting to blur the historical record, and feeling queasy about putting out fictitious paint jobs for a model so compellingly close to the real thing, I’ve withdrawn/deleted them. For anyone interested, the first two will still be up at AussieX.org.
A bunch of K5054 images -- gives a good sense of the aircraft’s historical arc:
For Darryl, Malcolm et al’s interest mainly, I suppose, looking back the key waypoints on the paint job research seem to have been:
1. The email from David Coxon, Curator of the Tangmere Military Aviation Museum, who passed on his fine bit of history (worth repeating here):
“ … when the Spitfire Society built the replica which is displayed in our Museum they conducted a great deal of research into determining the exact colour of blue the aircraft had been painted. Fortunately, R J’s son Dr Gordon Mitchell had been given a small model of the prototype Spitfire by Supermarine/Vickers painted in the colour used on the prototype.”
2. Malcom in the Spitfire forum quoting from Leo McKinstry’s Spitfire mentioning "… the application by a Rolls-Royce subcontractor of an ultra-smooth finish, in a high gloss pale grey-blue colour."
3. The discovery that the aircraft made its first public appearance at the Royal Air Force Air Pageant at Hendon on 27 June 1936. I’d known of the Duxford show in 1937, but this early 1936 showing strongly suggests that – coming as it did just a few months after the maiden flight –Vickers Supermarine settled on the grey-blue paint job, without another one intervening.
And, no, I don’t know the exact composition, hue, etc. of the unpainted aircraft’s “protective coating”
and have gone with the usual primer colours, informed by Michael Turner’s painting (included with the download) and a scale model I bumped into somewhere in cyberspace …
So in a way I’m back pretty much where I started, with a repaint of a light blue K5054 livery, after a great little research journey – even if it was time I couldn’t really afford! Let’s place the blame for all this firmly where it belongs: if A2A hadn’t come up with such a superb sim, few of us would have been inspired to get this serious about the quality/accuracy of a repaint.
Like the model itself, this has been truly immersive – I’ve come away knowing a good deal more about the real aircraft and its history. In all, well worth the price of admission.
Warm thanks to all for a fine FS boogie. Hope you like the paint jobs.
Grant
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repainters going. And, yep, the classic blue-grey scheme is wonderful, bringing out, as Supermarine no doubt thought it would, the Spitfire's timeless lines.