Originally Posted by
HAS59
The Hemp colour was not designed to camouflage our large aircraft from attacking enemy bombers.
It was a measure designed to make our aircraft harder to detect on Soviet Medium resolution reconnaissance satellites – which it did.
It forced ‘Old Joe Vodka’ to launch more of his High Resolution Satellites to do the same job.
And in doing so was another step to them becoming bankrupt – which is what ended the Cold War.
Mmm, bearing in mind the current events, perhaps it didn't end, they just took some time out.
Re the original post, the RAF C130 fleet is heading back to green again (slowly) but the reason the paint schemes have changed is that the threats have changed - with most NATO mud moving aircraft zipping about at low levels during the 'Cold War', the A2A threat from above meant that a 'land' scheme was more effective for attack aircraft (witness the green adopted by the Harrier II fleet originally)*.
With that diminished, or non-existent, the need was for a scheme less visible from the ground or in a higher level A2A. A USMC mate tells of seeing the first of their grey AV-8Bs taking off alongside one of their 'RAF-style' camouflaged ones. The 'dark' one was vsisble for some time after take off, where as the grey (or gray) one disappeared into the murk fairly quickly.
*The need for manouvering low level aircraft to have an overall scheme was well illustrated in san carlos, when Argentine aircraft banked away and revealed their light undersides against the dark surrounding hills.