Great pictures of the lovely Spits together, and nice coverage of N3200’s first flight. I’m looking forward to seeing them all together come the summer!
As to the proportions of the roundels:
As I understand it, sometime in April-May 1940, there was an order to replace the three-colour Type A fuselage roundel on RAF fighters with the four-colour Type A1 (i.e. with the yellow ring). The replacement was to be of the same outer diameter as the original-i.e. the whole lot would need to be repainted as the red/white blue bit in the new four-colour roundel was now smaller than the extant red-white-blue roundel.
However, the fraught war situation at this point, and some lack of clarity in the original order meant that most squadrons simply saved time by painting the yellow around the edge of the existing roundel, each unit interpreting the order somewhat individually! In some cases the correct proportions were maintained leading to a vastly oversized roundel (seen on N3200) but in other cases the ground crews made the yellow ring much thinner so the roundel would still fit on the fuselage (P9374).
Eventually, after the chaos of Dunkirk the surviving aircraft were repainted to the correct standard (see X4650, AR213 or Hurricane R4118)
I think that’s more or less right, although I’m sure someone better informed than me will be along in a moment to correct it!
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