Thanks to Lyric1 for finding me the info for this skin which is an adoption of a 335 RHAF Spitfire skin Kev367th did in 2006. Unfortunately the aircraft he chose was a post war NMF Spitfire and therefore ineligible for the game. Because of this I have replaced it with a wartime camo'd Spitfire from the same squadron.
This is the Spitfire Mk V of Flying Officer Giorgios Pleionis of 335 Squadron of the Royal Hellenic Air Force during operations against the German garrison in Crete in late 1944. By this time the squadron had overpainted the standard RAF markings on its aircraft using a lighter RHAF blue.
Pleionis entered the Hellenic Air Force Academy in 1939 and in April 1941 was transferred to an RAF base in Iraq to finish his training on Hawker Hurricanes. While he was there the Germans overran Greece and so on completing his training he became a pilot in the RAF's Hurricane-equipped 335 Squadron. This was one of three Greek squadrons that flew for the RAF during the war and fought in the desert campaign, into Italy and after the liberation of Greece over Crete. After the war he stayed in the RHAF and flew against the Communist rebels during the 1946-49 Greek Civil War. Later he flew as CO of a Greek transport squadron in the Korean War. After opposing the military junta that took over the country in 1967 he was stripped of his rank of Brigadier and dismissed from the Air Force, only to be reinstated when democracy was restored in 1974. He died aged 101 in 2021.
