Rare pink spitfire replica on display at Imperial War Museum in Duxford
EXCLUSIVE: Some 50 of the aircraft were camouflaged in the unusual hue to carry out low-altitude reconnaissance during the Second World War, though they are a rare sight today.
It's not a colour that would necessarily inspire fear. But emerging from the clouds at sunrise or sunset, the “pink” Spitfires blended with the sky, making them difficult to spot or shoot down during missions over enemy territory.
Some 50 of the aircraft were camouflaged in the unusual hue to carry out low-altitude reconnaissance during the Second World War, though they are a rare sight today.
Pin-sharp cameras could take thousands of pictures as the Spitfires swooped low over enemy territory, their pilots risking life
and limb to help Allied planners decide which targets to hit in bombing raids and other actions.
Their distinctive colour was officially known as Mountbatten Pink – a mauve-grey first used on ships of the Royal Navy to try to hide them at dawn and dusk.
Images of the pink Spits are now as rare as hen’s teeth. The few photographs that exist were usually taken in black and white, which did not do justice to the striking paintwork.
Now, however, a replica can be seen at a new exhibition called Spies in the Skies at The Imperial War Museum in Duxford, near Cambridge.
Exhibition project manager Liam Shaw says: “Seeing a pink Spitfire close up is a very rare experience and we are absolutely delighted that the public will be able to have that experience here at Duxford.
“The role of these Spitfires in reconnaissance was top secret. Even now it is difficult to find much information about them. Getting the right paint colour was a challenge, but luckily someone found some information on the mix of paints used. It was mostly white paint with one part roundel red.”
The replica, made of plastic with a steel frame, represents R7059, a Mark 1 fighter built at Eastleigh, near Southampton, which first flew in 1941. It has been given the fuselage codes LY of No1 PRU (Photo Reconnaissance Unit).
Records show the original aircraft was piloted by James Morgan on photographic reconnaissance missions throughout the war, but little is known about his individual missions.
“The missions were very varied,” says Shaw. “Sometimes they took photos of troop positions and at other times they flew over sites which had been bombed to help assess the damage.
“The timings were carefully planned so that they would blend in with daybreak or sunset.”
Even to this day, it is unclear who came up with the idea of painting the recon Spitfires pink. Some credit Sidney Cotton, an eccentric Australian inventor and aviator who became a friend of wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill and James Bond author Ian Fleming.
Cotton was fascinated by flying, and set up a service to mount rescue missions for lost explorers in Newfoundland and Greenland. In 1931, he found and rescued British Arctic explorer Augustine Courtauld, who had become trapped on an ice field in Greenland.
In 1939, M16 operative Frederick Winterbotham recruited him to take clandestine aerial photographs of the military build-up in Germany. M16 provided him with a Lockheed 12A Electra Junior, a small passenger aircraft built in Burbank, California.
It was modified to carry a pair of downward-facing F.24 cameras and two Leica Reporter cameras.
Liam Shaw says: “Cotton was a very interesting character, a sort of Walter Mitty chap. He basically pretended to be doing passenger flights over Germany in the months before the Second World War but he was in fact taking hundreds of photographs.
“He must have taken a lot of risks to carry out this important work.”
The intelligence he gathered from covert reconnaissance was also passed on to the French secret services. There are claims the smooth talker even persuaded senior Luftwaffe officer Albert Kesselring up with him on one flight while surreptitiously taking pictures of a German airfield.
At the start of the war, the RAF did not have a modern photo reconnaissance aircraft. Long-range reconnaissance was meant to be handled by Blenheim bombers, short-range by the Lysander army co-operation aircraft – but neither were suitable, as they were far too vulnerable to enemy fighters. In October 1939, two Spitfire Mk Is were given to Cotton.
These were the first of around 1,000 Spitfires eventually converted or scratch-built for the reconnaissance role. This unarmed fighter would roam as far as Berlin, providing the RAF with a vital capability throughout the war.
Cotton was soon running the No1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) at Heston Aerodrome in West London.
As the war progressed, the PRU was equipped with aircraft specifically designed for reconnaissance.
The Supermarine Spitfire PR Mk XI was unarmed, with its guns replaced with cameras. It could reach altitudes exceeding 30,000 feet and achieve speeds of over 400mph. The PR Mk XI photographed the famous Möhne dam, gathering intelligence on the success of the 1943 Dambusters raid.
Other triumphs included the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck on May 27, 1941, six days after a high-altitude PRU Spitfire flight located it moored in Grimstadfjord, Norway.
The only two remaining airworthy PR Mk XIs, PL965 and PL983, are also displayed in the spotlight exhibition.
Also on view for visitors is the pale green Lockheed Electra which Cotton actually flew on his secret spying missions.
“Cotton reputedly came up with the idea for the colour of the aircraft,” says Shaw. “It’s a sort of light green colour. Cotton felt the colour provided very good camouflage. Supposedly he saw a similar aircraft which took off from Hendon and he took the colour from that.
“He completely duped the Germans during the war and people on the ground found it hard to spot him as he flew about in the very well-camouflaged aircraft.”
Cotton relished his reputation for being unconventional. The PDU became known as “Cotton’s Crooks” because he had so many run-ins with top brass officers.
He even had a badge made, called CC-11 – “eleventh commandment” was: “Thou shall not be found out.”
Ultimately, some 80 per cent of all wartime intelligence came from aerial overflights. Cotton also developed the light blue colour utilised for the high-level reconnaissance Spitfires, which made them very hard to see during the day. Along with several of those blue Spitfires is a Westland Lysander Mk IIIA, which was built at the Westland Aircraft factory in Yeovil, Somerset.
It was fitted with so-called stub wings for carrying small bombs. While with 225 Squadron, V9312 flew some 30 photo sorties.
After a complete restoration, it flew again in 2018.
On the walls of the giant hangar at Duxford, videos of flying missions flown by many different aircraft are played, creating a unique atmosphere for visitors.
There are also blown-up black and white images of some of the snaps taken on sorties.
Several shots show the army research centre in Peenemunde, Germany, where V1 and V2 rockets were developed to strike terror into the civilian population of England. Another shot shows heavy bomb damage inflicted at the Melsbroek airfield in Belgium after a raid by RAF Bomber Command on August 15, 1944. The landscape is pockmarked with bomb craters, showing the devastation of the raid. The runway was put out of action and nearby buildings were seriously damaged, inflicting a heavy blow against the Luftwaffe.
Another shows how the Germans tried to protect the Dinard airfield, near St Malo, France. False hedges are woven into the landscape to make the airfield look as though it is just a series of fields. The cunning plan did not fool our
war leaders.
Detailed photos showed the landscape was fake and that the Germans had even managed to paint a road on rough ground.
A shot of Boulogne in 1940 shows many barges were in the harbour. War planners thought they might be used as part of an invasion of Britain, but most would have sunk during the attempt to storm our shores.
“The exhibition will shine a light on a lesser-known aspect of the secret flying
operations by very brave pilots and photo interpreters to give our war planners the edge in deciding how to defeat the Nazis,” adds Shaw.
“It is unique because for the first time we have tried to tell a story of the crucial work done by our spies in the skies.”
- Spies in the Skies runs until February 25 at IWM Duxford. Visit here for more information
