RAf Bomber wavy demarcation lines, why?

Thanks Edgar/Eddie – satisfied my curiosity for me.

Roger Smith.

Here is Gibson’s autograph – http://www.autographcollection.co.uk/guy-gibson-autograph-signed-display-9105-p.asp

Clearly a different signature.

Doubt it’s Gibson; in May 1941 he was flying Beaufighter nightfighters

Edgar, have you deciphered the signature on that document?
I am not familiar with Guy Gibson’s signature but that looks like a capital G, then something, capital G, l (or i?), b, o, n.
Apologies for the topic diversion.

Roger Smith.

Ground-based camo is only going to work at lowish altitude, so as perfomance increased it became increasingly irrelevant. Black (or sky etc) paint on the underside is a different matter.

It was never ordered, and never authorised:-

Didn’t last long, either.

Interesting that a wavy line was less effective than a striaght line.
What happened to the merging mentioned in the document. A straight line cannot be concidered `merging`.
I guess they decided any airframe loss due to the demarcation was outweighed by normal combat losses and became irrelevant,
and as a straight line was easier to paint they stuck with that. Much like the Americans abandoning camo all together.

Well from personal observation I can say it’s true in the ’70’s & ’80’s. All the a/c I saw being painted were masked for the camo schemes.

Because it breaks up a shape better than straight lines. Also to produce a straight line you need to mask off the line, where as a wavy line can be done free hand.

This is true for American aircraft that have an irregular demarcation. However RAF aircraft had a very precise wavy demarcation which must have been masked to produce.

Thankyou Edgar. That is very informative.

It was never ordered, and never authorised:-

Didn’t last long, either.

They didn’t have any masking tape?

Because it breaks up a shape better than straight lines. Also to produce a straight line you need to mask off the line, where as a wavy line can be done free hand.

Possibly mis-interpretation of the instructions that where colours met they should not have a ‘sharp demarcation’ as it should be broken by a wavy line rather than a soft sprayed edge, which is what was actually intended.

I don’t think I’ve seen an explanation, but I suggest it may be because wavy demarcations are better than long straight lines, which do tend to draw the eye to them. Perhaps eventually they abandoned even the faint idea of day operations were it might have been useful…