Steve N--
Do not touch the red button...Oh crud, now you've done it.
Your eyes are not telling you fibs; you're very, very correct about the paintwork on CAvM's otherwise-nice Spitfire IX NH188. There isn't, sadly, a colour on the exterior of that Spit that's right, excepting the black serial numbers. As a IX, she should be in dark green/ocean grey camo on top with a pale grey underside; the insignia should be in dull colours (brick red, etc); and the codes and day-fighter band should be Sky. Essentially in overall livery NH188 should be a close match to Bill Greenwood's T.9...or to Mike Potter's XVIe, which actually depicts an aircraft from the same unit, 421 Sqn, as CAvM's.
Instead, we see a scheme in some ways more applicable to a BoB-period Mk.I, but even then the colours are wrong. What it appears to be is medium brown and USAAF OD green on top, with USAAF neutral gray underneath; "home front" colours in the insignia; and chalk-white codes and band. The 421 Sqn sponsorship mascot (the McColl-Frontenac Oil Company's Indian head logo) is correct though.
The brown/green camo was applied to NH188 (over a previous blue civilian scheme) by the donor, Dr John Paterson, in the early sixties, and has been retained on NH188 in tribute. However, old photos of NH188 show the underside in what appears to be Sky (which would match the brown/green as seen on Spits in 1940)...yet now the undersides wear the much darker USAAF gray or somthing close to it, meaning at least that part of the airframe has been refinished differently.
How I wish NH188 could spend a little while in, say, Goderich...
Sorry for the rant...but ya did ask for it...
S.