Hi everybody…I have this Revell 1/48 A/B-26C Invander kit thats begging for me to build. One thing bugs me…it shows 2 different colors of interior green. I have the chromate green in Model Master and the #1184 Testors Zinc Chromate. Are these the 2 colors I need for the interior? Any help would be greatly appreciated. My wife says im being…uh…stubborn, but I want it to look right. [8)]
Sounds about right. Chromate green would be used for most interior fuselage areas and Zinc Chromate would be used in the landing gear bays. One thing to keep in mind was that there was a lot of color varience on the interior colors of these wartime aircraft. In the case of B-17s they were done with interior green, chromate green, olive drab, dark olive and in at least one case - black. Should production crews run out of the standard paint they would use whatever was at hand rather than slow down production.
Thanks Swanny, I knew somebody would help. It also shows Olive drab in some areas too…now it makes some sense! Thanks again for the help.
Bondobandit (ha, ha, good name! - I just stared using Bondo body filler to fill in the seams of my F-105 and am very impressed with the coverage and how easy it is to work with.)
I also have the Monogram A-26C and I appreciate your posting and the reply from Swanney. He mentions interior green in his comments about the B-17. I used Humbrol interior green for the cockpit of my P-51D Mustang and I really liked the color. It’s a little toned down from Zinc Chromate (which I used for the wheel wells) and I think a thin wash with some drybrushing would really pop out some of the details in that rather detailed interior of the A-26. I think you’ll be able to see some good detail through the glass nose. One thing about the kit, the wings don’t have the holes for the 3 wing mounted machine guns and the instructions don’t touch upon how to install them in the wings, although the kit comes with them. However, they’re shown in the painting and decal placement diagrams. Still scratching my head about that one
I have the Aeromaster sheet for three American built French aircraft (A-26, P-47 and F8F Bearcat) and the ones for the Bearcat worked out beautifully. As a result, I’m going to be doing my Invader in French markings as it was used in Indochina. I also just got the Warbird Tech Book on the A-26 and the drawings in it are outstanding.
Good luck.
Rick, thanks for the heads up on the machine guns…I’ll keep my eye peeled for that !
As far as my name…well…I am a bodyman…LOL.
Bondobandit;
I’ve got this info off an earlier thread in this forum I hope this’ll help you out,
http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2004/01/stuff_eng_interior_colours_us.htm, it has the currect colors used by the U.S. in pre-WWII through the end of WWII it comes in 3 chapters and when you get it on line print it for your future builds
Thanks 72Cuda, I will definately check that out. Thanks for all the help.[8D]
I’m currently working on the same kit.I purchased all three of the Eduard kits for it(interior,exterior and bomb bay).They really help bring it to life.The interior kit gives you all the pieces to cut out the front hatch and pose it open with a nice photo etch door.It also has a nice dash with a guage film.This is only my second try at photo etch details and it’s going together well.There are some pieces that I won’t tackle but the rest is great.If you want to try it,it’s well worth the extra effort.
hey Bondobandit;
I didn’t mean to cut Swanny short or anybody on the matter of interior painting but I really enjoyed reading the article and want more people to have the same knowledge so when they do build an pre-WWII & later U.S. war planes they have extra ammo for getting it right the first time and not having a judge slap you down for not being correct ( but in actuallity their are the uninformed ones ) just like in my past, and it’ll also make you feel like a Million Bucks
I recently purchased the 1/72 B-17 F Academy kit. I wondering what is the right color green got the interior.It calls for Chromate green but others have told me that it’s RAF Interior green. Somebody help me please.
B-17s and various sections of this and particularly bombers were made by different factories and companies all over the country (the Waco glider was made by, among other firms, a casket company, giving it the lurid nickname the Flying Coffin, among other reasons). But because of this, you can have a flight line with a whole squadron of B-17s, some made by Boeing in Seattle, and some by Vega, and some with turrets by General Electric and components by Bell aircraft or any number of subcontractors and assembled in no particular order of companies.
The point I want to make is that these companies used whichever shade of protective coating paint they could get – virtually always some shade of green, but very often not the same two shades of green or the shade the government specified in the contract – because, remember, it was wartime and the point was not to get just the right shade of green, people were dying after all, the planes were needed to be built fast, not the perfect shade of green, and the real need was to get chromate on the metal so it wouldn’t corrode and cause a catastrophic failure in flight. And again, it was almost always some shade of green, but remember, a great many B-25s and, yes, I’ve seen it in A-26s, in the same place on the aircraft – inside the rear half of the airplane behind the bombay to the tail, are in chromate yellow.
And also, don’t forget that parts from two or more damaged aircraft were often taken from the field and, at the depot, made into a whole airplane again. The biggest mistake you could probably make using shades of protective green (or yellow-green) paint, is to use the same color on an entire bomber.
And as long as we’re calling out shades to use, don’t forget one of my favorites, often found in B-25 turrets and some cockpit interiors (B-26 Marauders had it; so did some P-47 cockpits) was bronze green, which is a dark green with a bluish cast to it.
The navy, with not quite so many types and not so much of a hodgepodge of manufacturers as the AAF, was slightly more consistent with their protective coating colors, and often used my favorite protective color, good old bright chromate green, which turned up quite a lot on Grumman planes for some reason. (But , according to the authoritative Monogram Publishing [not related to the model company] Painting Guide to U.S. Navy Aircraft, Vol. 2, they also had a protective gray inside engine cowlings and on some wheels.)
In the old days of modeling (like 1982) before rivet counters (those unpleasant fat guys in dirty tee shirts) were allowed to breed and multiply so much, and we got too worried about what the builders of the real planes didn’t sweat about very much themselves, like chromate colors…back in those day, when the callout was for “interior green” or “zinc chromate” you simply reached for that bright green color. But, that was making it too simple.
I suppose my (typically too long) message is to not do what I found myself doing more and more over the years, and that is putting off the building for so long until so many things had been gathered – the perfect paint shades, AM decals, reference books, PE parts, and on and on for a year or more before the model got started. Relax. Your personal craft is, after all, the most important thing. Not the supplies of the craft.
PS: Having said that, those three Eduard frets for the A-26? I think those may be the best frets out of the hundreds that prolific company has ever made. Especially that bomb bay and outstanding cockpit. And the kit is still great, at a reasonable price, too.
Hi Guys,
I just had to pipe up here and tell of a model I am building of the Monogram A-26.
It is an On-Mark Marketeer, a non pressurized executive version of the Invader. The airplane I am modeling is a polished aluminum and gray bird with chrome landing gear struts and medium exec modifications including tip tanks, a slightly elongated upper deck and some rectangular cabin windows.
I am using a Toms Modelworks aftermarket kit for the covering of the turrets and tip tanks, it will have stock props and “B” type engines but with an 8 gun nose which I will slightly modify to show this airplanes radome.
I have an easier time with the colors than you guys though, as I just look at the present day airplane and copy it, as it is based nearby. It has a mostly light gray leather interior, three chairs and a three place couch with cherry wood panels in the back with a drop down trap entry door. The cockpit is light gray with a dual pilot set-up but a very modern panel.
It should be fun. And if I was to ever take it to a contest the judges wouldn’t know what to do with it!
Chris…
Yeah, On Mark also did the revamping of the A/B-26K’s that were used to shoot up trucks along the Ho Chi Minh Trail early in Vietnam. They upgraded its avionics and the weapons system too, I think. I used to have an ancient issue of IPMS quarterly with a cover story on how to make On Mark Invaders along with the history of these conversions. Yours is the first time I knew On Mark did executive conversions, but then, that was probably their main business. I can remembers as a young kid in the 60s, before executive jets were common, many comopanies had old B-25s as executive trransports, and that’s why we have so many on the warbird circuit today. Many, many of those still flying were once executive transport converted back to military configurations, with varying degrees of accuracy.
Tom