SAAF  Spitfires

The South African Airforce operated ten SAAF squadrons with Spitfires during WW2. In this gallery we illustrate a two quite colourful ones. The first machine, a MkVb, AX-N  is from 1 Squadron SAAF and was flown by Lt. Eric Robinson, who went on to become an ace.

Apart from the red wing tips, typical for a number of 1 Squadron aircraft, it also bears his logo "Cirecooks IV" on the cowling as well as the name "Phyllis" on the 20 mm cannon. 

The second machine, a MkVc, KJ-Z was flown by 4 Squadron when based at Sicily. As this Squadron was operating mainly over the ocean, they were painted in an all blue scheme

It is unclear if this was single tone of blue or whether this was a high altitude two tone blue scheme. As the sluggish MkVc with vokes filter would not be ideally suited for high-altitude work, and since SAAF high-altitude interceptors were usually bare metal, we and others assume that this aircraft was painted in a single tone blue scheme.

All roundels used were from generic sheets, whereas the Squadron codes and nose are were test runs printed on an Alps of a proposed Springbokdecals Spitfire decal sheet (springbokdecals@yahoo.co.uk).