A Little VC10derness

I was looking at a picture of a VC10 inflight wearing its British airways colours and noticed that the underside was not completely painted blue. There is a strip of silver (natural metal) and I wonder if there was a reason for this? I see that on their TriStar, Trident, BAC 1-11, Viscount, Vanguard, etc they were all painted completely blue.

Which picture was that?

Skydrol is a great paint stripper!
You are correct, though. The BA scheme for the VC10 was for the underside of the wings and the centre section to be light grey and this carried back in a grey strip under the rear fuselage almost to the tail cone.
The scheme just didn't suit the aircraft whatever variation was tried. The tail was just too big to look nice in red.

Many thanks for that answer. It makes sense to me now. The photograph was in Scott Henderson's lovely book on the VC10, page 141.

I had a look at Keith Gaskell's book about British Airways and their colour schemes and it seems that the grey underside was a feature of the colour scheme. It also appears on 737s and 747s in the same scheme. There are also photos of 747s which appear to have a completely blue underside so perhaps the scheme was changed after the VC10s left service. The book doesn't say anything about the grey underside but there are a few photos showing it on different types.

I don't know if the reason for the different colour is connected to the paint stripping properties of Skydrol, if you do get a leak then the bare underside will not show as much paint damage as a blue underside would.

Edit: here's a photo of a 747 with a grey underside: http://www.airliners.net/photo/British- ... 1160557/L/
And here's a VC10 for comparison: http://www.airliners.net/photo/British- ... 0235505/L/

I suppose also that there is also a weight saving in not painting all the underbelly.