WWII USAAF AIRCRAFT COLORS VOL.1

The olive upper surface and the gray underside of American bombers

From 1941 the standard finish of the aircraft of the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) consisted of a matte olive brown-green on the upper surfaces and a neutral gray underneath. In this form the four-engine Fortresses flew over Germany, the Mustangs of the early series and transport machines over Burma; only from 1944 did unpainted metal spread.

The package contains four tones. Beside the basic olive and gray there is an added darker green, which the leading edges and the tail surfaces of machines modified for combat received, and a sand color for aircraft used in North Africa and over Italy.

The green patch on the leading edges tends to be overlooked, and yet it is exactly what tells a frontline aircraft from a factory finish. It was applied irregularly and by hand, so it suits being sprayed freehand at low pressure and at a distance from the surface, or simply suggested with a light mist.

The bottles hold 17 ml and the material is meant mainly for an airbrush. On real machines the olive shade changed markedly under the sun, from brown to almost gray-green, so it pays to keep some of the paint aside and mix a lighter variant from it for lightening the middle of the panels.

Anyone building machines from the end of the war will appreciate that the gray lower tone stayed in use even after the change to bare metal: it was used on fabric-covered control surfaces and on parts that could not be polished for production reasons. The same tone was also carried by the inner sides of the undercarriage doors and the frames of the canopy on some series.