The Spitfire in day-fighter paint

October 1, 2026 · feature

Turn the page in that book of profile plates and the Spitfire is waiting. Its camouflage swirls across the wings in big curves. A pale band rings the tail, and a squadron's letters run down the flank. Ours wore two flat colours. Now the Spitfire is painted like the real thing, and the machine on the plate is yours to earn.

Two Spitfires over the Brick Sea: the upper one rolled toward the camera, showing big swirls of dark green over grey on its wings with a yellow strip down each leading edge, the lower one flat, with pale 'YQ' and 'P' codes on its flank either side of a gap and a pale band around its tail — The new factory finish rolled up to show its wings, and 616 Squadron's YQ-P below it.

A day fighter, as it went to war

Every Spitfire now leaves the factory in the paint the RAF's day fighters wore from late 1941. The upper surfaces are Ocean Grey with big, sweeping patches of Dark Green across them. The patches run over the wings, down the fuselage and up the fin, and every airframe in the sky wears the same pattern. Underneath, it's Medium Sea Grey.

The marks a nervous gunner looked for are all there too. The spinner and the band round the rear fuselage are Sky, a pale duck-egg green. A yellow strip runs down the outer leading edge of each wing, from the cannon to the tip, so you could tell a friend coming head-on.

Those yellow leading edges are the giveaway in a head-on pass now. A Spitfire coming straight at you shows two thin yellow lines either side of a pale spinner.

616 Squadron's YQ-P: 30 air kills

The plate the paint came from shows a Spitfire of 616 (South Yorkshire) Squadron, coded YQ-P. YQ is the squadron and P is the aircraft. Earn 30 air kills and she's yours.

She wears the same Dark Green and Ocean Grey, with the squadron's letters painted big and pale down each flank. YQ sits ahead of where the roundel was and P behind it, the right way round from either side. She has flown a long summer, too. The paint is worn through to bare metal where pilots and fitters climbed over the wing roots, along the leading edges, and round the cowling panels that came off every morning.

Where to find it

Pick the Spitfire in the hangar and press 🎨 PAINT. YQ-P sits at the end of the row. Hover it while it's locked to see how close you are. It only paints the Spitfire, so it only shows up when a Spitfire is your pick, and that includes the clipped-wing Mk XVI. Equip it and climb into something else, and that aircraft flies its own factory paint. YQ-P will be waiting the next time you fly a Spitfire.

The other paint schemes still work on the Spitfire. Midnight Reaper and the rest repaint the camouflage away, but the Sky spinner and band and the yellow leading edges stay where they are.