so what I have decided on the seat is to do the armor plate, back cushion, and leave the flare holders, as this is an A model Mk II as in the picture. More to come soon.

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so what I have decided on the seat is to do the armor plate, back cushion, and leave the flare holders, as this is an A model Mk II as in the picture. More to come soon.

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Good call Doug (I'm still not sure about the flare rack? But that is just me though )

Oh, one other thing. You will be told by many that the crow bar clipped in the door was never painted red but I have recently been told by no less than Geoffrey Wellum (The youngest pilot to fly Spitfires during the Battle of Britain) That they were indeed painted red, because they were a piece of safety equipment!

When I asked the question about the colour he asked me what colour these "experts" reckoned they were and when I told him "black or natural metal" he sipmly said "B******s! They were painted red, and they were painted red on every Spitfire that I flew". He then told me about what they were used for and that was why they were painted red.

Fittings, for crowbars, were installed, on the I & II, from February, 1941, and the crowbars, themselves, were factory-fitted from January, 1942 (mods 320 & 483 apply.) I read (somewhere!) that the positioning of the stencils depended on the factory, and the Pilot's notes seem to bear this out, with Spitfires generally having two stencils readable up or down, with Seafires having a single stencil readable from the side. At a model show, many years ago, a man (obviously an ex-pilot) commented to me "All these lovely Spitfire models, but, you know, all the time that I was flying I never saw a red crowbar; green, black, or silver, never red."
Edgar

Hi Mal

As with so many things, I guess it depend who you talk to. Some years back, Edgar Brooks posted over on The Aviation Forum:

Hi Mal

That's precisely my point - Edgar was quoting another pilot. So we have one who says "always red", but another saying "never red" in their experience. Faced with contradictions like this, there probably isn't a single definitive answer.