“The undersurface was black and sky-grey or black and a sky-blue.
White wasn’t officially used.”

Not sure that’s true Moggy,my research over the years for various model kits suggests that the underside of the port wing was painted black and the starboard white.Sometimes they would even go as far as to paint the undersides of the fuselage,tail etc aswell.
These markings were for recognition purposes in the same way as the later black and white D-Day stripes.The half-and-half scheme was phased out at the end of 1941 with the introduction of the black and white stripes.
Below is a pic of the AFC’s Hurricane P3351 in her Battle of France colours.Pic taken by Ian Brodie and ‘lifted’ from the Alpine fighter collection’s site…

Both of them have a big mouth at the front and rear?? 😀

Sorry,here’s the pic…

Looks like an Ilyushin Il-14.Odd way of displaying it with the tail in the roof like that.:confused:

I’m no expert,but I think part of the reason is the helicopter.If you think of something like a SeaKing,it can do all of the roles you just mentioned and it doesn’t even need to land.Even if it did need to land on the water it is cleared do so,although you have to keep the rotor going to maintain stability.This is why the underside of a SeaKing looks like a boat.
I remember a case a few years ago where a Sikorsky S-76 suffered an engine failure whilst flying out to an oil rig in the North Sea.The crew carried out a perfect water landing on the open sea and despite the rough sea conditions the machine remained upright and afloat for many hours after the passengers and crew were rescued.A floatplane probably wouldn’t have performed so admirably.

I was going to say the same thing as Doughnut.What’s the sense in moving her to a location where she can’t be ground run??

Looks like she’s coming along beautifully Eddie,many thanks for sharing the pictures.Looks like another NAW masterpiece in the making. 😎