page_title: Aircraft camouflage
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Aircraft camouflage / History / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: The Royal Air Force in Britain, April 1941 Supermarine Spitfire Mark IIA, P7895 'RN-N', of No 72 Squadron, Royal Air Force based at Acklington, Northumberland, in flight over the coast, piloted by Flight Lieutenant R Deacon Elliot.
context_page_description: Aircraft camouflage is the use of camouflage on military aircraft to make them more difficult to see, whether on the ground or in the air. Given the possible backgrounds and lighting conditions, no single scheme works in every situation. A common approach has been a form of countershading, the aircraft being painted in a disruptive pattern of ground colours such as green and brown above, sky colours below. For faster and higher-flying aircraft, sky colours have sometimes been used all over, while helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft used close to the ground are often painted entirely in ground camouflage. Aircraft flying by night have often been painted black, but this actually made them appear darker than the night sky, leading to paler night camouflage schemes. There are trade-offs between camouflage and aircraft recognition markings, and between camouflage and weight. Accordingly, visible light camouflage has been dispensed with when air superiority was not threatened or when no significant aerial opposition was anticipated.
  Aircraft were first camouflaged during World War I; aircraft camouflage has been widely employed since then.
context_section_description: During the Munich Crisis of 1938, the Royal Air Force implemented plans to camouflage its aircraft in its disruptively patterned Temperate Land Scheme of "Dark Earth" and "Dark Green" above and "Sky" (similar to a duck egg blue) below. This scheme was known colloquially as "Sand and Spinach" when the pattern was painted on at the factory, large rubber mats serving as guides. For many types of aircraft, particularly fighters, the rubber mats were reversed for even and odd serials, named A and B patterns. The undersides, and lower half of the fuselage, of night bombers were painted black.
  Variations on fighters at the start of the war included painting the underside of one wing black. Later in the war the dark earth was replaced with "ocean grey" and the underside was "Sea Grey". Naval aircraft used two tones of grey over sky. Coastal Command, which carried out patrols for enemy vessel over the open sea, used white instead of sky. In the North Africa campaign a combination of "Dark Earth" and "Middle stone" were used for the top surfaces, the underside was "Azure blue". The same azure was used on day bombers overseas. High flying RAF
  Photographic Reconnaissance Unit aircraft were given an all over blue colour, but they were given "licence in the camouflaging" of their aircraft.
  Some United States Army Air Forces aircraft used a variation of the British camouflage schemes (mostly on aircraft originally built to RAF orders) but most USAAF aircraft did not use multiple shades on the top side of the aircraft. Instead, most were camouflaged in olive drab above and neutral gray below, though some had the edges of flying surfaces painted in medium green. In the later stages of the war, camouflage was often dispensed with, both to save time in manufacturing and to reduce weight, leaving aircraft with a natural metal finish.
  Soviet Air Forces aircraft were painted with shades of green, either plain or in disruptive patterns above, and blue-grey on the undersurfaces.
  The basic German (Luftwaffe) camouflage during most of the war was based on a light blue undersurface and a two tone splinter pattern of various greens for the upper surfaces. In the first year of the war, the top colours were dark green and black-green; later, lighter and more greyish colours were used for fighters, though bombers mostly maintained the dark green/black green camouflage. The side of the fuselage on fighters and some light bombers often had irregular patches sprayed on, softening the transition from the upper to the lower surface. The undersides of night bombers and night fighters were painted black early in the war, but by 1943 switched to lighter base colours of their usual light blue undersurfaces for aircraft flown by day, and a light gray base coat over the upper surfaces to match the skyglow over the German cities they were tasked with defending. A special pattern was devised for the Mediterranean front, consisting of a sand yellow that often faded to tan, with or without olive green patches. As Germany lost air supremacy, ground camouflage became increasingly important, and late war fighters received a two tone scheme like the British Sand and Spinach, in dark brown and light green.
caption: Supermarine Spitfire in disruptively patterned RAF 'Sand and Spinach' uppersurface camouflage, 1941
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