The Aerodrome Forum - Sopwith Camel Camouflage

Greetings Von Sacchio

As in many things, the answer is "it depends". Unfortunately the underside of the fuselage is an area that seldom if ever is visible in photographs and being shadowed looks dark anyway:(

After careful examination of many photographs and WWI surviving aircraft in British museums, plus research on the background and application of WWI, my totally unprofessional opinion as an amateur with too much time in his hands is that if there's a rule, it is that CDL finish on the fuselage was the norm not the exception.

Though I forgot to crawl underneath the airplanes to take photos of the undersides to answer this vexing question, the photos I took last year might be of use, at least in the Camel case, you can view them at my site

http://community.webshots.com/user/Capitan_Contreras

There's no known reason why the fuselage underside should be painted in PC10, and I am wondering if the restorations/replicas wich are painted so are just not a misinterpretation of black/white photos. Then again maybe somebody could find a photo of a crashed British airplane showing the underside painted to clear the doubt.

The only reason for painting it would be to hide oil and exhaust stains from the engine flowing backwards in the airstream, this makes the belly of a SE5 look grimy, and in a rotary engined airplane such as the Camel would be downright messy. It has been suggested that paiting of this area, aside from aesthetics, must have been neccesary to protect the fabric dope from being attacked by the oil. I don't know if castor oil affects dope, I think that the unburnt petrol coming out of a rotary would be more likely to damage it, being a powerful solvent, but come to think, this is confusing cause and effect.

I think that the repeated cleaning, scrubbing and or scraping of the oil deposits on the belly would have resulted in the need to repair the finish, wich should have been done with just clear dope, but in the field PC10/12 pigmented varnish must have been more readily available.

That being said, it must be noted that in the Camel at least, there's a metal (aluminium presumably) plate riveted/screwed/nailed to the belly of the airplane just behind the engine opening, with the intention of protecting the fabric from the aforementioned deposits, and making cleanup much easier. This plate as far as I can tell and reason would be left unpainted.

Back to the photos of the British museums. The 2F1 Camel at the IWM has the fuselage unpainted, the one at Hendon is painted, but in both cases, the metal plate is left unpainted.

My reasoning is that at a time of PC10 pigment shortages were the engine cowlings and metal panels in Camels were left unpainted, or painted in grey, it makes no sense that PC10 would be wasted in painting the belly, remember wood surfaces were also left unpainted or painted in standard khaki.

So in closing, in most cases I would go for a CDL finish on the belly, if the machine has the engine cowling unpainted such as the one in Hendon, then it must be definitely in CDL. All others your call.