No. 315 Polish Squadron Mustang III

[oboe]

This is a recreation of Piterko's orphaned 315S/RAF skin.

Mustang MkIII flown by Eugenius Horbaczewski of 315 Sqdn based at Coolham, Sussex.   Horbaczewski was an officer in the Polish Air Force but left Poland shortly after the German invasion and made his way to Britain and the RAF, arriving in June 1940.  Originally posted to No. 303 Polish Squadron flying Spitfires, he was involved in the Dieppe operation in August 1942 and also flew with Stanislaw Skalski's "Skalski's Circus" in North Africa during 1943.  In February 1944 he was given command of No. 315 Squadron, which traded in its Spitfires for the Mustang III.  On anti-"Diver" operations, Horbaczewski shot down four V1s, and on a long-range mission escorting Beaufighters to Norway, he shot down a Bf109 and shared another.  His final tally was 16 1/2 kills. 

On 18 August, flying FB355 PK-K, he led a dozen Mustangs on a cross-channel sweep from Brenzett when they encountered and attacked a large group of Fw190s from II./JG 26.  Possessing the advantages of surprise and altitude, 315 Sqn. claimed 16 kills in 10 minutes of fighting, the highest number recorded by an RAF squadron in a single sortie.  The Squadron's only loss that day was Sqn Ldr Horbaczewski, who was killed when his Mustang was hit and crashed near the village of Villennes.

[Devil 505]

Very nice work.

Your camouflage colors look a bit too pale to me, though. Compare what you have with Greebo's Spit in the same colors.





I think if you can match the tone he has, that your Mustang will be perfect.

[oboe]

Thanks, Devil.

In fact I did use one of Greebo's Spits (the default Spitfire IX) and used Photoshop's color sampler tool for get the Green and Med Grey colors.  I agree though, this seems too pale compared to the one you've shown.  I'll tweak some more...

EDIT: Here's Greebo's Spitfire IX skin I used as standard for the Green/Grey camo.  The insignia colors are sampled too, except for the yellow.  Perhaps Greebo can weigh in.



Man, look at the paint chipping on his fuselage/wing fillet.  Just exquisite.

[Vraciu]

Nice job, Oboe.  Love the work you did on the aileron fences, too.  Those are the best I've seen yet.

[Guppy35]

I'm ready to fly that one in June  

I don't believe the yellow extended all the way along the leading edge though.  Most images show it ending outside the guns similar to the Spit.

[Brooke]

I'm ready to fly that one in June  

 

[Greebo]

Really nice looking skin Oboe, sure to be popular with British players.

Here are my current RAF colours in RGB for that scheme:

Dark green: 64/68/54
Ocean grey: 91/98/104
Medium sea grey: 143/147/150

I darkened a lot of my colours a bit around the time AH3 went live as everything looked a bit washed out with the new lighting. I think ZD-B may be using the old lighter shades and VZ-B the current darker ones.

[Nefarious]

Looks great! <S>

[oboe]

I'm ready to fly that one in June  

I don't believe the yellow extended all the way along the leading edge though.  Most images show it ending outside the guns similar to the Spit.

Good catch, yes I know-- that's what I'm used to seeing too.   The best evidence I found was in the top photo below.  It shows the leading edge yellow extending through the gun muzzles and even inboard of those, probably at least to the white theater ID stripe.  We can't see inboard of the white stripe due to the standing figure:



but the photo below shows the yellow leading edge extends all the way to the wing fillet:



There are a couple of very well done plastic models of this aircraft, one shows the leading edge yellow ending at the gun muzzles and the other shows it extending all the way to the wing root.  And there's a color photo of Mustang III's from No. 315 with no yellow at all:





I relied most heavily on the top photo.  It could be disputable that the yellow edge was also present inboard of the white theater ID stripe, but I had found photo evidence of the yellow extending to the fillet on other squad's Mustangs, so in the end I decided to keep it the same as Piterko had skinned it. 

Greebo, thank's for the explanation and color information.  I'll try getting closer to those colors.

Thanks all.
 

[lyric1]

 

[Guppy35]

The other thing to consider is the RAF camouflaged Mustangs, like the USAAF  OD/Gray Mustangs, lost the tail stripes in March 44.  The model builders can't decide as you can find all versions for this bird in particular

[Guppy35]

Further to the above.  There is a brief youtube clip of this particular bird post D-Day and it has tail stripes.  It does appear in practice though that they did come off the tails.





Note the leading edge on this 315 kite.

[oboe]

Do you suppose the extra adornment (extending leading edge) might be due to being a squadron leader's bird?   

As long as its correct either way, with or without the horizontal stabilizer stripes, I'm more of a mind to keep them as being true to the the skin being adopted.

I note also the wing roundels have a white circle in them - very odd, what's the story on the upper wing roundels?

[Guppy35]

Do you suppose the extra adornment (extending leading edge) might be due to being a squadron leader's bird?   

As long as its correct either way, with or without the horizontal stabilizer stripes, I'm more of a mind to keep them as being true to the the skin being adopted.

I note also the wing roundels have a white circle in them - very odd, what's the story on the upper wing roundels?

I'd keep the stripes since they were on his bird.  The upper wing roundels are from very late in the war.  The RAF changed up again.  First it was to add the white to the upper wing roundel and at the very end they added the yellow ring on the outside.

These are Spit 16s at the factory. Note the large upperwing roundel with the white. 


These are Spit 16s at the end of the war with smaller upper wing roundels with white and yellow rings added.  You can see where they painted over the larger roundels

[oboe]

I think this is the final version.  Thanks for the suggestion about darkening the grey and green shades, I think it looks nice and is closer to the color photo of 315's Mustangs.  And thanks for the extra No. 315 Sqn pictures, Guppy, they helped.