I saw this on another thread and wondered who is feeding this ***t to the Daily Mail.
I don't hold with the rationale given altogether but it was a safe decision to stay with the USAF standard scheme. Yes someone would have had to have drawings and sought approval to differ.
I think their was also a discussion over the font used for the letters on the side.
Who cares that much.
Two stories that spring to mind - the weight of the paint scheme on the Nimrod R was said to weigh 700 lbs. I cant recall if this was a single scheme as thre was a time when they were not always stripped back to bare metal during a major at NMSU.
in the early 90s when we fitted a new Dolly Parton antenna. Some measurements of the dialectric properties (transparency) of the "bomb doors" was taken. It was found that they had had several layers of paint as they had not been stripped since new. Great lengths were taken to determine how best to strip the paint. We used an old AEW Nimrod radome to experiment. In the end it was a traditional paint scrapper job. the flakes must have been 14 swg thick in places. One single layer was put back on and the performance improved significantly.
I can't recall if we had a spare set of doors but all three aircaft were soon recovered to that standard.