Lucas, Paul Colour Conundrum Compendium No. 4

As in the three previous volumes, the articles reprinted here have not been reproduced in the order in which they were originally published, but have been loosely grouped into three sections on common themes and arranged in chronological order within the section. The first section deals with the Battle of Britain and for the first time in the compendium series contains material relating to the German Luftwaffe. Much of this material is drawn from contemporary British intelligence reports and is intended to offer a fresh perspective on a comparatively familiar subject. While one can be sceptical of some of the reports, there are a number of surviving artefacts, such as the fuselage section of a Bf 109 seen in the photographs in the 'Updates' section, which lend some veracity to some of the reports. The second section looks at some of the colour schemes used on British bombers and fighters from 1944 to 1964. The section begins with the previously unpublished Colour Conundrum, which is about a camouflage experiment carried out by the Bomb Development Unit in the winter of 1943-44 to improve the camouflage of RAF night bombers. For the first time in the compendium series, the third part contains material dealing with other aspects of what might have been, in the form of a series of "counterfactual" topics. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in a whole range of "what if" and "counterfactual" topics. While similar, these two themes differ in subtle ways.