US NAVY & USMC AIRCRAFT COLORS 1945-1980

From a dark blue deck to the gray and white scheme

American naval aviation came out of the war with a uniform dark blue finish that covered the whole airframe from the spinner to the tail. At the start of the 1950s it was replaced by a divided scheme: a light gull gray on the upper surfaces and white underneath, with the boundary running high along the sides. In this form single-engine attack machines, the first jet fighters and later carrier types all flew, and the scheme lasted into the 1970s, until it was replaced by unobtrusive grays.

Three bottles

The three of them follow that transition exactly: the dark navy blue for the oldest period, and the gull gray and white for the scheme that followed. Anyone building a machine from the Korean conflict will use all three, because at that time both forms met one another side by side within a single squadron. Both light tones are also standardized, so they can be compared against any color table.

A note on gloss

Postwar naval finishes were predominantly glossy, so as to stand up better to salt water, and a matte finish therefore looks out of place on these machines. It is a good idea to go over the paint with a gloss or semi-matte varnish and to matte only selected places, such as the fabric covering of the rudders. The boundary between the gray and the white is masked with tape run low along the fuselage and higher on the leading edges of the wing.

White that does not stay white

The lower surfaces of carrier aircraft were exposed to exhaust gases, oils and salt mist, so a pure white undersurface looks untrue on a model. It works well to dirty it lightly with a gray wash around the panel joints and to draw faint vertical traces down from the drain holes. The dark blue, by contrast, faded toward violet, mainly on the upper surfaces of the wings.