Interesting Dave, my understanding (thus open to any corrections, with evidence!) is that every fixed-wing FAA combat aircraft from the early 1950s (maybe earlier?) through to the early Sea Harriers FRS.1s were specified to be painted in EDSG top & sides.

Yep, then post Falklands the Shars (and HUnters) were painted in Dark Sea Grey – it was the compromise between the EDSG (Ideal at low level) and the higher level Medium Sea Grey that the 809 Squadron aircraft were painted.

Same colour used on Shackleton MR under & sides (all over on mid period MR & AEW).
DSG only being used by the RAF in their standard two tone grey/green camoflage of the post war era.

I’m a little more out my comfort zone there (i.e. Need to check) but I think the later ones (AEW) were overall Dark Sea Grey and that might have been the colour on white/grey ones (Early ones were of course MSG over white!!)

The NA.39 development aircraft certainly do seem to have had a unique blue upper scheme, which I had assumed was applied by Blackburns rather than the service.

It could have been anything applied by Blackburn, but I wonder if it was Aircraft Blue (BS381C 110) – i seem to recall an FAA Hunter painted with that colour on the upper surface. – it’s slightly lighter than Roundel Blue

The Russians at one point planned to fly a variant of the An-72 as their AWACS aircraft off their never-completed supercarrier Ulyanovsk, but decided against it.

http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/misc/ram/an-71.html

The idea behind operating the U-2 from carriers was if they were unable to base them other than on CONUS, the early models would not have had the range for ‘tactical’ operations in SEA.

Thanks – always wondered what colour was used on RN helos!
On a similar tack, was RAF blue-grey 633 the shade used on the Buccaneer prototypes and early S.1 development aircraft?
The shade used was darker than the ‘Dark Sea Grey 638’ used on later production S.1 and S.2 aircraft, and also seems too dark and too blue for ‘Extra Dark Sea Grey 640’.

S1, S2s etc were Extra Dark Sea Grey. AFAIK, the first FAA jet aircraft painted with Dark Sea Grey (other than some conversion flight Phantoms in camouflage) were the Sea Harriers in 1983. EDSG fades in an operation environment, and can look quite blue in certain lights, but I’d agree the prototypes did look very blue.

Excellent, guess what my next question was going to be!
I take it the yellow upper was for ditching visibility reasons?
Which Ian Huntley book has this information?

Not a book, one of the old articles he did for ‘Scale Aircraft Modelling’. He also mentioned an interim shade (A British produced ‘Sea Blue’, which is possible, although I’ve never seen any evidence for that (Lee, does your book cover that?).

Came across this photo of S/Sgt Wilson in the new IWM beta website photo collection.

http://beta.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205192813

I would need to double check, and happy to be proved wrong, but normally Extra Dark Sea Grey was the colour used.
RAF B/G tended to be used for VIP and COD aircraft.

RAF B/G was chosen as the nearest colour in the standards to the US Sea Blue that early Whirlwinds were painted in according to the late Ian Huntley

They now have three marine craft in their collection

http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/collections/marine-craft/

Read about the last one here:

http://www.asrmcs.org.uk/ST206.htm

Just a pity that none of the classic ‘Whaleback’ HSL air sea rescue craft survive in restored condition – a couple of abandoned ones may still lurk (One bare fuselage existed until 2004 but was scrapped)

He obviously held this ‘icon’ in high regard. One only has to look at it to see the loving care that he has shown it.
He’s now got a penchant for ‘0’s on the supposedly bargain price he’s asking.
I think the ‘o’s will add up to be the number of buyers he gets.
How about £500 !!!…… I’m not here and gone tomorrow….!!!!

From memory, the original owner was, in his opinion, ‘shafted’ in the sale of a previous gate guardian Spitfire many years ago (It was sold on for a much higher price than he sold it for). This has coloured any valuation he puts on the SWift, a sit is a much ‘rarer’ aircraft. Obvioulsy, as the Swift has no chance of flying, he’s not going to get anything like that