Originally Posted by
Martin the Martian
I've often wondered why grey has prevailed for medium/high altitude ops, particularly in the west. PRU blue was the standard finish during WW2 and it certainly seemed to work well.
We went to grey/light olive for low-level helicopter ops in NW Europe when it was determined that with the poor viz and the smoke of battle/Chieftain engine heat-exchanger failure, everything goes grey at about 1km. It helped that they'd figured-out a way to stop the Gem engine dumping it's oil down the side of the aircraft so we lost the shine at about the same time.