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Anyone got any period photos of Spitfires with oil canning?


Gazzas

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7 hours ago, Derek B said:

 

Hi Thierry.

 

In a number of cases, yes, I agree that some airframes may not have had sufficient time to become extremely weathered, however, even a few weeks service during that critical and demanding period of time would still have resulted in a degree of weathering, if only superficial or light.

 

As to the topic of surface skin distortion (the so-called 'oil canning'), this could, and was, evident on many airframes, even after only a relatively short number of flying hours from new. Therefore, it may not have been unusual for a relatively new aircraft to show little sign of paint wear and tear,  but still exhibit a degree of surface skin distortion. 

 

Derek

 

Hi Derek. Thanks for the clarification. Actually, to me, this depends on the weathering type. I'm sure there were many small scratches, oil and fuel spills or soot marks because they were intensively used during weeks. However, if aging such as oil canning or scratches going down to metal was possible, to me, this was rare and hence not really representative. That was my point.

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What you say is true Thierry, the early Gloster built Hurricanes had the inferior paint.

It obviously was not the case with Spitfires as we've never seen one with paint falling off.

My point, was that the weather in GB was anything but friendly to a/c that sat out in it

Not disagreeing with any of your assessment.

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9 hours ago, thierry laurent said:

Exactly and to me this is logical. Many were very recent, if not brand new. They were well maintained from grass fields, not desert full of dust and gravels or coral islands. And finally, a lot did not have the time to be heavily weathered because they had very quickly a terrible fate. So, neither the amount of time or theatre of operations would result in heavy use weathering for a very large majority of them. As I wrote this is possible as a minority of them arrived years before (e.g. Squadron 19) but not probable for a very large majority of such airframes.

 

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It’s not grass fields that cause the weathering, but the amount of human time spent on the wing root. Ground crews had hobnail boots. The 19 sq spitfire in the photo in 38 hadn’t served very long at all. I’m also looking at a colour seafire  photo that had a wing root dinged to bare metal, on a carrier. seafires not noted for longevity.

Personally, I always weather from a photo and there’s plenty around after all

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15 minutes ago, DrDave said:

It’s not grass fields that cause the weathering, but the amount of human time spent on the wing root. Ground crews had hobnail boots. The 19 sq spitfire in the photo in 38 hadn’t served very long at all. I’m also looking at a colour seafire  photo that had a wing root dinged to bare metal, on a carrier. seafires not noted for longevity.

Personally, I always weather from a photo and there’s plenty around after all

True but you did not get my point. Obviously the wing root damage is made by the boots. However, damage is not the same when the shoe soles are in the grass or in a rocky/dusty/sandy environment. I'm convinced that many pictures are showing paint scratches with damaged paint possibly down to the primer rather than metal in far more cases than we use to think. Black and white pictures do not help for sure. I already wrote it two times in that thread: I'm not saying this was not possible but I'm convinced this is not quantitatively representative for a BoB scheme Spitfire as depicted by Kotare. This is different. 

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35 minutes ago, DrDave said:

The seafires above are not colourised. They are wartime colour photos. One is a ground instructional airframe, dinged to death by boots, on a hard standing on grassy RNAS Yeovilton. Another is a serving seafire  on a carrier, without mud or sand, just big hard feet on it.

Alas, to my eyes, ground instruction airframes are not really relevant as they are intended too have young mechanics climbing over them all the time!

The Seafire is a far more useful example but we have to look at the time service length. My point is that we can in many cases find some pictures demonstrating that something was possible. However one or two trees do not make a forest. I looked at many BoB Spitfire pictures (actually there are not tons of them) and also checked the service time of multiple airframes for my Mk.I kit. Before doing that exercise, I was also convinced the planes were quite battered because of the intense use. However, this did not correspond to what I saw and to the service time of a lot of them. No problem seeing someone doing a BoB Spitfire model with oil canning and wing root damaged down to metal. Personally I won't do it and will not recommend doing it even if the artistic license may result in a more attractive model.

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14 hours ago, MikeMaben said:

Hop over to the Hurricane thread. There are numerous photos of a/c that have great hunks and chips of paint missing.

There were several sorties a day and between sorties they sat out in the rain and wind. What's the 'weather' like in GB

in autumn ? I hear it can be rather unpleasant.

 Yes. And if you read ALL my post, you would see that I wrote that you could find photos to demonstrate ALL types of wear and tear, and not. I am not insinuating EVERY Squadron did this - touched up paint. If you are going to quote me, please use the entire relevant parts. Thank you

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17 hours ago, DrDave said:

It’s not grass fields that cause the weathering, but the amount of human time spent on the wing root. Ground crews had hobnail boots. 

Any ground crew that climbed on aircraft wearing hob nailed boots deserved to be drummed out of the service.  These aircraft weren’t built from armor plating, it was just very thin aluminum.  Those boots would have destroyed a surface like that.   Plus, most of the pics I’ve seen of RAF ground crew seem to show them in low cut shoes.  

Edited by John1
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