[flypaper]

It seems that a lot has been said about the 5 color French Camo scheme but, very little has been posted as to what the colors look like. I'd like to take this opportunity to address that.

First of all I have no real credentials other than being an avid collector with a burning desire to find out what the colors were and what all the mystery was, well it was not an easy task and has taken me over 53 years from my first 1/48 Spad until to day to feel comfortable to speak about what I've found. During those years I have spent over 45 of them zeroing in on the Camo colors of the French air services from WWI-WWII. Its been an interesting journey.

Now the best information collection of these 5 colors from the work done by Mr. Alan Toelle in his Project Butterfly which was published in Cross and Cockade in 3 parts. There are others who have added more information and I for one heart fully thank them all for there time and hard work.

Mr Toello based his color findings on the sampling of as many fabric samples as he was allowed to take. He put them through rigorous test and published what he found in C&C. At the same time he also listed the colors he found to be used by the French in this Camo as read outs from a book called the Methuen Handbook of Color. Unfortunately this book was and is extremely hard to find, to the best of my knowledge the last printing was in 1985 when I was luck enough to part with $35.00 and get a copy. That same year I happened to be reading the latest copy of WWI Aero (issue 104) April 1985 when I came across a letter in the "markings" section of the magazine that came from Mr. Toello explaining that an error had been made in the original Methuen call outs for the colors published in Project Butterfly and it had taken him this long to realize it because he had only recently gotten his own copy of the Methuen Handbook. In that letter he cleared up several question concerning the finish of Spad VIIs and other point but the important part was he set the record straight on the call outs and listed them as they should have been.

With out the book it didn't matter the call outs just looked like a broken string of letters.

Luck was on my side and ten years after the letter in WWI Aero I had completed a series of color chips using the call outs of the 5 colors from Mr Toelle corrected list.

Since it would have been impossible to use the exact formula of paint to compile my chips I it was more expedient to use model paints....lets face it over the past 20 years we have gone from 2/3 manufactures to a tidal wave of paint from all over the world made just for plastic modelers.

Unfortunitly I have had very poor results with adding the proper amount of aluminum to the paints as was done in the real a/c. I dont think this skews the result any which way because they do match the Methuen call outs that Mr Toelle published. in otherwords this is the color and what it should look like after it has bee mixed with the aluminum minus the reflective quality of the aluminum.

Then again you can take them or leave them.....They match the call outs and as far as I know no one else has even approached these colors using the Methuen Handbook as there guide, much less posted the chips.

There are several dozen chips. I have 11 for the dark green alone that fall into the methuen spread found by Mr Toello. his reasoning was that there were more dark green samples to test and check and because of the loose quaility controls there are variations. At the other end there are only 3 for the beige again because of the limited samples.

Now it must be remembered that Mr Toelle gave his Methuen call outs in ranges some covering pages in the book 0ne Methuen color has 48 different shades! So I tried to match various model paints that would fall into those call out spreads. You see that there was a vast shift in some colors, ahain because of the avaiability of samples

I did not scan black...because black is black....word of warning the black on a full size a/c has NO aluminum powder added to it.

But I did scan a 5th set of chips, one that is referred to as "Yellow" which was the underside color of the 5 color scheme....this "Yellow" also goes by the name Ecru.


As A lasy point let me say that your monitor may not be calibrated the same as mine but if you look you will see that I printed the name of the model paint I made the chip from....

Well I hope I've been of some help

Buck Bored aka Flypaper