Could someone help me out by letting me know what shade of blue the standard 500lb. practice bomb is? Thanks. I am trying to get the final info for an A-10 “Snowhog” together and they were only loaded with the practice bombs.
That depends on their age and how long they have been sitting out in the sun versus in a protected environment of some kind. I don’t know for sure what FS color was used when they were new. Any of shade of medium blue would probably work.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
As a armourer,i know the colour that the RAF use,& i’m sure its the same accross the board,is called ‘eau-de-nil’ & is a sort of greyish-blue & it does fade over time.
Merv
The time period for these would be circa 1982 and they were used in Alaska if that would make a difference
I’d try a dark Blue color with a olive drab tail section
BTW are you talking about the MK82 GP bombs or the MK82 Snake eye 500lb bombs or both ?
Re: boybuddho’s picture of the bombs in front of the F-16. It is difficult to tell from the perspective of this picture, but those look like either Mk-83 1,000 lb or Mk-84 2,000 lb bombs. That is the first time I have seen the blue nose band. All of the Mk-82 practice bombs that I have seen had the entire body painted blue and usually have the standard steel Olive Drab tail fin assembly attached. Ya learn somthin’ ever’ day.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
This picture was found on http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/index.html and shows Mk.82 500 lb. bombs. I have seen the all blue practice bombs on Strike Eagles, and half olive, half blue too.
Regards, Dan
blue for all practice rounds, bombs, missles, rockets, etc
The bombs you see in the picture with the F-16 are called BDU (Bomb Dummy Unit). They are painted OD because they are used for weapons load training and static displays. The blue band is used to designate them as inert. The fuse in the nose is also a training fuse. It does not have the extension rod on the inside.
Practice bombs dropped by aircraft will be painted blue with OD or green tail assembly units. They will have a steel plug or cone on the nose where the fuse usually goes. Practice or inert bombs are actually a steel caseing filled with concrete to simulate the weight of the bomb. I have seen a lot of the BDU loaded in my time in the AF.
smaller size but same color.
Berny is right on the money.
Philp’s picture shows BDU-33’s. They have a white phosphorus charge in them for scoring where the bomb hit. My understanding is that the BDU-33 has the same drop characteristics as the Mk 82 slick. Berny is that true?
After talking to co workers who are bomb loaders, others who are armament people, and A-10 drivers, the BDU-33 does have the same drop characteristics as the MK-82. However, the aircraft can carry more of them (BDU-33s) than MK-82’s, and get in more practice drops. At least that’s how it was explained to this non fighter crew chief…
HTH
I thought I’d add these that I took on board USS Midway in the late 80’s for a little variety.These don’t look as crisp as the ones in Philp’s pic. Plus a practice LGB[:)]
The closest color I could find to the shade of blue you are looking for would be Tamiya’s Sky Blue (XF-14). According to the color chart I have here there is no Model Master equivelant. So I can’t really say for sure what FS number it would be.
Seeing all those BDU-33 and BDU48’s does bring back a whole lotta memories though.
Paul
[quote]
Originally posted by warlock0322
Seeing all those BDU-33 and BDU48’s does bring back a whole lotta memories though.
Paul
How right you are. The first practice bombs I saw was when I stationed at Zaragoza AB Spain. Up to then, erverything I saw loaded on the F-4 was live. We also flew with MK-106 high drag. They were painted orange. From then on it was BDU-33’s and MK-106’s. It was very seldom that I saw live ordinance loaded after that.
I think I found a really close match to the color. It is a Pollyscale RR color called GN Big Sky Blue. Thank you all for your help
OK, I’m throwing in my halfpenny. In the mid-80s, by coincidence, in the same year I flew in the back seat of an ANG F-4C out Kelly AFB in San Antonio loaded with dummy full-size Mk. 82’s which we did not drop, but were there for whatever you call it in PT where you practice flying with a load under the wings. Later that year I flew in an F-4D out of Carswell AFB with an AF Reserve unit and we had a load of BDU-33’s which we dropped on a range up in Oklahoma.
Being a modeler, I looked our ordnance load over carefully in both cases (since in the latter instance we were also hanging a Pave Spike pod in the port forward missile bay and a Vulcan pod on the centerline. (And, please, I tell it this way not because I’m a jerk and like to brag about my good luck in cadging media flights, but only because I was never in the military and can’t say “I know it was this color, because I was trained as an armorer and handled these things all day.” I can only report what I saw and made notes on.)
The punchline is that the perfect color (IMHO) is Polly Scale RAF Azure Blue (used on WW II RAF desert schemes), or MM’s will work too, since as was stated, these things fade fast in the sun, and I’ve never seen any quite as pristine and dark as those BDU-33’s in the photo above. I forget the FS no. for these things, but I never found a commercially available version of it, and the flat azure seemed to match the real bombs better than the chip in the FS book. Notice the blue stripes on a dummy AIM-9 round. It’s always darker than the blue on the bombs, but the FS number for a training round is the same no matter what kind of ordnance is involved. But the AIM-9’s don’t lay around in the sun all day, being put on and taken off constantly by crews practicing loading, being treated with more tenderness because they quite often have an expensive seeker head on them. The bombs are just hunks of iron with fins.
This issue is worth this many words to me because I’ve often used “screaming blue meemies” on my models in the past instead of OD bombs just to add color to subjects painted in SEA or other drab aircraft paint schemes. And lets face it, every tactical airplane in the inventory has carried more blue bombs than the OD variety. At least, until the spring of 2003.
TOM