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Anyone know if anti-flash white was actually effective, as far as providing legitimate and measurable protection to an aircraft and crew? Hiberniantears (talk) 16:10, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Even compared to polished aluminium. Try US refs, re B36 Andy Dingley (talk) 16:37, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The white colour was for the same reason that IIRC, the Protect and Survive booklet recommended painting one's house windows white when a nuclear attack was imminent. The flash from an exploding nuclear weapon is so bright that the intense light travels through the window glass and sets anything inside the house on fire. The Anti-flash white on the V-bombers was for this same reason, so that the light energy would be reflected away before it could cause damage to the airframe. As regards the crew, they would (should) have been flying with cockpit shutters down and on instruments the whole time in an actual war situation, it not being necessary to have any outside view once off-and-away from the airfields and on the way to their targets, the actual dropping of the weapon being left to the aircraft NBS - Navigation and Bombing System. [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.53.118 (talk) 18:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

White paint was made out of something different back then.Zaphraud (talk) 01:50, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, the same anti-flash paint was used on Concorde as it was necessary to reduce the sun's heating effects at the high altitude (c 60,000ft) that the airliner was intended for, the aerodynamic heating already raising the skin temperature above that of normal airliners. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.77.70 (talk) 11:22, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Even if they really used white to decrease sunlight heating, they will not use infrared-reflective paint unless Concorde’s engineers were morons. A heated body emits several times more infrared than it can absorb sunlight, and making it infrared-white would greatly hinder its radiative cooling for the gain of deflection of only a small portion of sunlight. What is known about anti-flash paint’s albedo in infrared? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:55, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Some temperature relief will be afforded (about 6-11 C) by applying a white finish to the skin." - 1967 Flight article on Concorde here; [2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.31.130.17 (talk) 16:48, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is amusing that a coat of paint is considered useful protection against the most insanely savage man-made violence ever unleashed. It would be interesting to know if any rigorous scientific evaluation of the efficacy of the aircraft coating was ever performed. — O'Dea 10:11, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

It strikes me that in order to be effective, this particular color would have also had to be "white" well outside of the normal visual range of colors as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zaphraud (talk • contribs) 21:40, 2 April 2011‎ (UTC)[reply]

In ultraviolet, maybe. But, given quite high temperatures of a fireball, not in infrared for the sake of its own cooling: see #Concorde above. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:03, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, in ultraviolet. A common modern white paint mineral actually becomes extremely reactive instead under UV light.Zaphraud (talk) 01:50, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The most important aspect was infra-red reflectivity. As basic high school physics will tell you, the peak of IR radiation depends on the temperature of the radiator. The relatively short IR wavelengths produced by the hot fireball need to be reflected. Emissivity of a supersonic aircraft relies on much longer IR wavelengths, because such aircraft might be hot, but hardly so in comparison to a nuclear blast.

Also Concorde doesn't rely all that heavily on radiative cooling. There are better ways to achieve it. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:05, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't have to be anything other than ordinary white paint for it to do its job. It doesn't need to have some fancy "IR reflective" properties, normal white paint is already pretty good at this. The "anti-flash" in the name I think just specifies its use. White-coloured objects are highly reflective, it might be tempting to think "Not as reflective as a mirror or something shiny though?". White objects tend to reflect far more radiation than shiny/silvered objects, that is why they look white, they are scattering a very high proportion of all the light that falls on them in all directions. Mirrors for example, reflect far less light than a sheet of white paper, mirrors seem very reflective because they reflect radiation much more uniformly in a sinlge direction whereas, say, white paper scatters it - thats why it looks matte and not mirror-shiny.

You only have to refer to some of the "luckier" victims of the Japanese nuclear bombings. There were some people who received only minor burns because their clothes were lightly-coloured, whereas people in darker clother, or with exposed skin, were far more seriously injured. Light painted wood was almost unharmed next to other unprotected materials that were set on fire or badly charred.

Another factor in the protective ability of a coat of paint, is the duration of the flash, studies during testing (and observations of the damage in Japan) show that flammable objects are ignited by the flash, yes, but most of those fires extinguish themselves immediately after the flash itself subsides - a few seconds of heat is not enough to properly set a fire, once the heat source is removed, most fires die out. The reason why much of Hiroshima and Nagasaki burned has far more to do with broken gas mains and overturned/damaged/destroyed stoves and boilers.

The ability of the flash to cause damage is of course heavily dependant on yield.

Quite so. The point about anti-flash paint was that it was the flash of the bomber's own recently-released nuclear weapons going off that the paint was intended to protect against. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.148.221.26 (talk) 10:24, 9 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is it that for this reason the first pic is about something "dark" showing a plane of a Five Eyes country and all the next five planes shown are with this threatening nuclear white are from per-se evil Russia? So nice to have a simple view on life? James Attica 92.116.184.61 (talk) 06:09, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]