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I wouldn't associate a bit of blue paint with RAF service per-se simply because bayonets weren't painted. And if they were it'd be a camouflaged colour but a shiny blade would be a give-away! The RAF were brought down to earth with a bit of a bump - if you'll excuse the phrase - in the early 70's by Sir Derek Rayner. He set about the nonsense of different Arms having different vehicles, colours, webbing weapons etc etc. He saved zillions by telling everyone including the RN to get khaki vehicles, use Army webbing and small arms. Their hierarchy dragged their heels in of course and it was like pulling teeth. So, as he described it, he '.....pulled their bloody teeth out.........'
The BEST thing was that within 1 hour, he stopped the different Forces purchasing commercially exact vehicles (like cars and vans....) in special gloss khaki, RAF grey-blue and Navy deep blue. In these special colours, they were worthless at auction post service!
Sorry to go off at a tangent but it is a dire foggy day in darkest Oxfordshire.............. A lot of public school Cadet Forces, the CCF's, had No4 and No9 bayonets for years and years but when H&S and then PC-ness came into being in the early 80's onwards they had to hand them in. My sons school still had a load that they kept with rounded tips or welded from the rear into the scabbards.
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Thank You to Peter Laidler For This Useful Post:
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12-17-2016 08:53 AM
# ADS
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I had wondered when RAF vehicles stopped being painted blue and changed to green, the same colour as the army, but hadn't realised that it was as late as the 1970s. The question cropped up a while back when I saw some pictures of a 1940s car that the owner had decided to depict as an RAF Staff car. I can't remember the make of the vehicle only that it was British
and the restorer had gone for the mid to late 1940s period. What stood out as being incorrect was the camouflage green/brown paint scheme with RAF roundels. I thought that it should have been painted blue but wasn't sure when the change-over in colours for RAF vehicles happened.
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