The spinner colour / color of Hawker Typhoon ZY-Y

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Mk9

Recruit
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Apr 17, 2020
Hi Folks,
This forum comes up all the time as I research aircraft so I'm hoping someone can confirm something for me...
Hawker Typhoon ZY-Y is the subject of an Airfix kit, and coincidentally, I ordered graphics to rebadge the FMS 1.2m RC version to ZY-Y.

An internet search reveals photos of the plane downed in a field but they are naturally black and white. The Airfix instructions, and a number of built models, show a red spinner with a yellow backing plate and a yellow dot on the front of the spinner. That seems like a lot of faff for wartime workhorses and I know the tip paintwork of a spinner always cops a flogging, so my question is:
How do we know the spinner backing plate and dot up front were actually yellow and not (say) sky?

If one wanted a red spinner, it would be a pretty simple job to unfasten the cover, paint red over the previously sky spinner, and whack it back on the plane and go fight a war. And it wouldn't be surprising if some of the red paint flaked off to reveal the sky colour.

I thought of this when scrutinising a high res version of the pic someone has posted on a flickr feed (I could post a screenshot I took, but that is probably a copyright issue so I won't). The yellow wing flash appears to be a quite different shade of grey to the spinner dot - which seems the same shade as both the backplate *and* the sky fuselage band. The dot isn't all that round either. It was the similarity in shade to the fuse band that made me wonder. Obviously the belly landing in a muddy field isn't going to help keep yellow stripes nice and clean, but the band is pretty certain to be sky and the upper portions look clean.

Of course, the image I was looking at may have been touched up, so hopefully someone who has access to better sources than me can clarify.
 

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