I was watching the first episode of series three of the All Creatures Great and Small remake.
The main character is buzzed a Tiger Moth, circa 1938-39.
It was silver with yellow bands on the wings.
I have seen (and flown in) a Tiger in green/tan Camouflage, and I know Harvards, Yales, Cranes, Cornells and many others were yellow, but I don’t know when the various colour schemes were adopted…(give me a break, I’m American).
So, proper colour scheme for the time?
By: anneorac - 10th January 2023 at 13:27
Does sound like a post-war scheme. Prior to 1939 they were originally all-over silver which then gave way to an all over yellow scheme.
However, the RAF operated surprisingly few Tiger Moths at this time with the Avro Tutor being the main ab initio service trainer. That’s not to say that there weren’t a good many Tiger Moths being used by RAF pupils. The majority of these were civilian owned and operated examples at the ever expanding elementary flying training schools. It’s these aircraft that, around 1939, would loose their rather colourful civilian schemes and don their more military looking coats of camouflage and yellow.
By: Prop Strike - 10th January 2023 at 10:43
Yellow wingtips seem to be a local mod, used by a number of squadrons.
”As the months went by, the Tiger Moth came back to life piece by piece. Wanting their restoration to be as authentic as possible, the three carefully researched official paint schemes used by the RAF during World War II. The camouflage colours – dark earth and dark green – were applied to the top and sides in soft flowing bands to make the planes less visible to enemy aircraft flying above. The bottom surfaces were bright yellow so the planes could be seen more easily by other pilots in training.
But student pilots continued to have trouble picking out the planes, so later in the war some squadrons introduced their own variations on the colours. Danny, Andy and Mike selected one of these, adding a bright yellow band to the fuselage just behind the cockpits and on the two upper wingtips. In the centre of each band are the RAF roundels in use at the time.”
Flight of the Tiger – In The Hills
By: Prop Strike - 10th January 2023 at 10:33
Overall Aluminium was the initial colour scheme for the Tiger Moth. As an example, K2488 was delivered to 2 ASU on 9.5.35. (Aircraft Storage Unit at Cardington) It was issued to 18 ERFTS on 16.9.37. This unit became 18 EFTS on 3.9.39, the next record for K4288 is 10 MU 30.7.45, then soc 25.5.50. 18 ERFTS/EFTS used numbers for individual aircraft identification.
Yellow was adopted for training aircraft in July 1936. At this stage the engine cowlings were polished metal , camouflage partway down the fuselage was adopted after the Munich crisis ( autumn 1938) Yellow outer wings were permitted from December 1943 although there may be examples from earlier than this.
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January 10, 2023 at 4:43 am