Tweets

Subscribe to:

FourFax Stats

  • Total Stats
    • 412 Posts
    • 151 Pages
    • 193 Comments
    • 53 Comment Posters
    • 30 Links
    • 7 Post Categories
    • 4 Link Categories

Archives

White Camouflage?

Harrier T4 ZB600 'R' 1984

Harrier T4 ZB600 ‘R’ 1984

Harrier GR3 'P' 1983

Harrier GR3 ‘P’ 1983

Torsten at sg-etuo.de has found these photos taken by Markus Jakobsmeier. They were taken in 1983 and 1984. He asks why we had the white colour scheme.

I suggested it might be to do with Exercise Maple Flag 13 which IV(AC) participated in in April/May 1984. But we didn’t take any T4’s with us, and the GR3 photo was taken in 1983.

I’ve got someone checking the Sqn diaries for me (another Parker!), but in the meantime, does anybody remember why we had this paint scheme?

1 comment to White Camouflage?

  • jimfernie

    I vaguely recall using this arctic camo’ scheme (as used by 1 Sqn for their northern Norway deployments) at that time to differentiate bounce/aggressor aircraft. Which makes sense as P/XZ135 is shown in clean fit (strakes, no guns) with captive ‘winder, and we generally used the T4 as bounce for the same dissimilar reason (and less fuel). Chris, my logbook has us both in ZB600 on 6 Oct 83 doing a 2v2 SAP bounce!

    End of ’83 we were working up for IV(AC)’s second deployment to the Falklands (and an up-coming Maple Flag), which involved a lot of bounced 100′ ULL SAPs out of Lossiemouth. The Falklands work up went something like this: SAP phase, ULL phase, ACT phase, Trappers, deploy to Stanley.

Leave a Reply