At Hyperscale a Mr David C Jones asked for the FS value for Du Pont's Sky Type S Gray, 71-021, thinking that it was close to either Camouflage Gray (FS 36622) or Aircraft Gray (FS 36473) but being unable to remember. Steven "Modeldad" Eisenmann responded, posting not only links to this blog but an image of the 1942 Du Pont colour card which has been reproduced here in the past.
I think there is a distinction to be made between the actual colour of the Du Pont 71-021 Sky Type S Grey paint and the question of whether or not it was used to paint aircraft - (leaving aside the question of paint production and application variables for the present). In Steven's response he did not draw that distinction, going straight to the question of actual aircraft painting. I'm not sure what the two FS values for the Du Pont paint are based on but if you look at the Color Server version of 36622 it appears similar to the colour seen in the heading photograph. The actual 595B chip is another matter. That is quite precise matching but the process by which it has been arrived at is difficult to determine.
The ARC discussion that Steven also linked to contains some bold statements regarding the published references of Tom Tullis (on AVG colours) and Dana Bell and I have endeavoured to address some of these here in the past. Tom Tullis' statement that there was no Du Pont paint equivalent to MAP Sky may be seen to be plainly wrong just by viewing the colour card attached to Steven's post and his conclusions can only be promoted as infallible (per the ARC discussion) by ignoring that fact. Also, let's remember that the "Sky Grey theory" originally based on a supposed misunderstanding of British requirements for Sky, facilitated by the fact that at that time the appearance of Du Pont 71-021 was unknown, has now been debunked, not least by Dana Bell's own publication on US Export Colors of WWII showing various US factory paint diagrams specifying "duck egg blue"! Having been debunked the theorists then shifted their position to the proposition that specifications were not followed in practice. Ah, how convenient - so that's how those light gray hues come back into the equation again!
Is the paint colour listed and shown on the colour card as 71-021 a light grey? And if we are to disregard colour reproduction as unreliable then surely that must apply to the colour photographs that some of these light gray conclusions have been based on, mustn't it? It strikes me that the ARC discussion is more about (some) people who have made their minds up that the paint colour was light grey and are sticking to that idea come Hell or high water - in which case factual "documents and specs" are as irrelevant as Steven suggests them to be - rather than in any spirit of truly open-minded research.
If Steven's own doubts about "documents and specs" extend to the actual Du Pont paint swatch supplied by Curtiss to the DTD and thence to Hamble as well as the 1942 Du Pont colour card which both lists and shows the paint colour 71-021 (as attached to his post) then we really are in a pickle. In that case I wonder how it is feasible for him to post with such certainty, confidence and regularity about Luftwaffe colours based on available charts and swatches? Surely the same doubts as to whether aircraft were actually painted with any of those colours must apply? But what I think he really means is doubt as to how far - or even whether - this paint colour was applied to the actual aircraft even when specified. Or, perhaps more objectively, whether other approximations or alternatives were also procured, expediently, to meet production needs. That I can agree with - up to a point, but not so far as the anything goes school of thought. However, the identification and matching of those approximations or alternatives to actual colour values is yet another matter and is very imperfectly achieved by using colour photographs, not least because the real paint oxidised and chalked towards a light grey appearance anyway. "Light grey" as a generic in any case covers a lot of ground and this perhaps explains why the various suggested hues of "light greys" for AVG Tomahawks are so diverse.
The Feb 1942 JAC meeting did recommend the use of "a neutral grey" as a generic undersurface paint but it is not clear whether this recommendation was pursued in production runs or whether aircraft finished that way were re-finished before delivery to British and Commonwealth countries. The available archeological evidence suggests answers but cannot be considered definitive due to the limitations of "proof by single example". What the recommendation does make clear is that it was a departure from previous arrangements. There is no indication that it was merely reinforcing an existing practice. It was a fundamental change in policy. This has significance for aircraft manufactured for the RAF before February 1942.
There was probably a delay before this change was implemented on production lines, if it ever was. However, by July 1942 British intransigence over camouflage ensured that JAC had agreed that in future the "British Sky Type S Gray" should become standard, surely a reference to the Du Pont hue. So there was a window of approximately 5 months in which it is feasible that "neutral greys" were procured and applied instead of Sky equivalents. Whether this actually happened and, if so, what they were in terms of colour, remains to be determined. If we accept that it did then a curious question remains over why aircraft finished this way seemed to end up in USAAF service and not in RAF or Commonwealth service. Were export aircraft taken over before finishing and does that explain the lack of RAF serials on some aircraft? But, if so, why were they not just finished in standard Olive Drab over Neutral Grey? There is a missing link in our understanding of how this process worked.
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