Blackburn Skua and Roc colour schemes.

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The one thing I get most correspondence about is the colour schemes worn by Skuas and Rocs. There is a lot of contradictory evidence on the subject. The following is the situation as I understand it.

Prior to the outbreak of World War Two Skuas had a silver finish - All the photographic evidence points to Skuas being delivered from the Blackburn Factory with this bare aluminium finish with just "type A" red-white-blue style roundels. In contrast the majority of Rocs delivered from the Boulton and Paul factory were delivered already painted in a camouflage scheme. Skuas issued to Fleet Air Arm squadrons were painted with bright identification stripes which varied from squadron to squadron.  Flight and squadron leaders seem to often have had additional stripes on the rudder. Unit three letter identity codes (Air group(Carrier)- Squadron- Individual Aircraft)  were painted over the fuselage band.

The following codes are noted for the four squadrons that used Skuas for combat duties.

800 Squadron - a time with single identification letters then A6

801 Squadron  - a period with no codes at all, then U6 then A7

803 Squadron -A7 (in use at the time of the silver Skua "photo shoot" as in photo below) - then A8 (at time of Konigsberg + Scharnhorst attack) then S6

806 Squadron - L6

Pre-war shot of 803 squadron. Fuselage band was blue-red-blue. ID letters A=Ark Royal, 7 = 803 Sqdn, G = Individual aircraft letter.

At the outbreak of war there seems to have been no hurry to camouflage the Skuas in a disruptive pattern. Skuas operating from the Ark Royal seem to have retained what looks like an overall silver finish for the latter months of 1939. It has been suggested that this was not silver at all, but a very light grey.

By the spring of 1940 Skuas had adopted camouflage. The exact shades used is the subject of much controversy. At one stage it was thought that two shades of grey were used .  The discovery of a rare colour film of a Skua from early 1940 (see below for an example) seems to show that the colours were very close to those adopted by the RAF in 1941   Upper surfaces of wings and tailplane and the top of the fuselage were in a disruptive pattern of  a bluey grey  (medium sea grey?) and dark green. The lower surfaces, fuselage sides and rudder were a light sky grey (FS36463 ? ). Style "B" red + blue roundels were used on the top of wings.

This rare colour image of a Skua is courtesy of Øyvind Lamo who runs the Operation Skua website. It shows Skua L2991 (8Q) from 803 Squadron. It was hit by gunfire in a dogfight with a Heinkel 111, over Åndalsnes in the Romsdalsfjord, on April 26th 1940. The aircraft made it to Ålesund, near the coast, and ditched in the harbour there. Still afloat it was towed to a shipyard nearby, and lifted ashore. The pilot, Lt.Cecil Howard "Kik" Filmer, survived and  after the war he went to live in Durban in South Africa. He died on 15th July 2007 at the age of 92. The Observer/Gunner Petty Officer K.G. Baldwin was hit during the dogfight, and killed.

Jamie Tindall's rendering of the Skua camouflage scheme for Microsoft Combat Flight Sim 2. You can download one of Jamie's colour schemes from the Sim Outhouse.

As an identification feature the port underside of the wing was usually painted black and the starboard white. When this half black/white scheme was used it was usual for there to be no underwing roundels (although there seem to have been many exceptions).  The three-letter identity code was carried vertically on the rudder. Aircraft operating from land bases usually had the camouflage pattern extended down the side of the aircraft.  The "carrier group" identity letter was dropped before the start of the Norwegian campaign, and some squadrons dropped the squadron code as well (for example in the colour photo above the Skua only carries "Q" the individual aircraft identification letter). So for the initial stages of the Norwegian campaign (April 1940) the rudder fin would usually be a light grey with either one individual aircraft code letter at the base, and perhaps an additional Squadron number above it.  From May 1940 red-white-blue flashes started to be applied to the fixed part of the aircraft fin. It also became usual for the fuselage roundel to have an outer yellow ring (style "A1"). At this stage the individual aircraft code letter was usually retained at the base of the fin painted over the fin flashes. The movable rudder was still in the light grey colour. The fin flashes were a feature of Skuas operating in the Narvik campaign and the attack on the Scharnhorst (May -June 1940).   From June the moveable rudder started to be camouflaged in the darker upper-surface camouflage scheme and the aircraft identification letter was moved to the fuselage side. At the same time the black and white underwing identification colours were being overpainted with sky grey  (the RAF was also getting rid of this rather silly method of trying to identify friendly aircraft).

To complicate matters those Skuas and Rocs allocated to the RAF administered Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Units (AACU) were often camouflaged in the standard RAF brown and green colours. Such aircraft had started off with an all-over black and yellow "target tug" scheme and the black and yellow undersurfaces were usually (but not always) retained by Skuas and Rocs operated by the AACU. These AACU aircraft were operated out of bases close to large population centres (Southampton, Edinburgh, Dundee and around the Thames estuary) and so were seen by the public much more often than the purely naval aircraft. This may be one reason why there are so many reports of Skuas being seen in RAF Brown and Green camouflage.

This is an impressive colour target tug colour scheme by Jamie Tindall for Microsoft Flight Sim 2.

Towards the end of 1940 Fleet Air Arm aircraft began to switch to an officially promulgated "Temperate Sea" scheme - This was upper surfaces of  extra dark sea grey (FS36099) and dark slate grey (FS34096) and underside of  sky (FS34424). The extra dark sea grey had a distinct blue tinge and the dark slate grey had a dull green tinge. Sky was meant to be a pale duck-egg green, but the shortages meant it was often mixed locally from whatever paints were available, resulting in duck-egg blue and light blue shades. The switch over to the new scheme was slow, taking until May1941.

It is impossible to tell the difference on black and white photographs between the early and the later "temperate sea" scheme, or even the RAF brown and green scheme.

One interesting colour scheme was applied to a single Skua used by Blackburn for ditching trials. This apparently had red stripes. The colour notes in the instructions for the 1939 "Frog" model refer to a red and silver striped scheme identical in layout to the yellow and black target tug scheme. Putnams "Blackburn Aircraft" also makes reference to the same scheme and illustrates it with a photo of one of the "target tug" aircraft. By reference to other photos of the same aircraft it is almost certain that the aircraft illustrated in the Putnam book is in normal target tug livery of yellow and black.- My thanks to Kim Elliott for showing me the Frog instruction sheet for reference.

The most in-depth guide to Skua colours and camouflage schemes are articles written by  Ian Huntley for Scale Aircraft Modelling magazine. They appeared in the November 1987, December 1993 and May 1994 edition. I am endebted to Nikos Tselepides for making me aware of these articles (via Jamie Tindall).

Model Aircraft Monthly - October 2007 Edition features a potted history of the Skua by Tony O'Toole which has more colour shots of L2991 along with an page of photos of L2942 after its internment in Sweden.

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Fleet Air Arm Special Interest Group

Matthew Willis' book on the Skua and Roc features colour artwork by Kjetil Aakra.