I am working on a 1/48 Academy F-15E Strike Eagle and have no good color references for painting the interior and exterior. The instructions are not much help. Is there anyone out there who could help me out? Books, websites, etc. Thanks, Al
Try wikipedia.org, the USAF Museum, Prime Portal, Airliners.net, aircraft resource center for free pics. The information is out there for free. You mighyt also check the local library for books.
goto
goto the aircraft section on the left side, then search f-15e, lots of kits come up, most with instructions sheets, some might be more helpful painting wise than the one you have
Andrew
the exterior is Gunship Gray… If needed I can find the FS number.
As of last month there still isn’t an F-15E close enough to being completely retired for the USAF museum to have one.
Like a-10’s, f-15e’s wernt always grey, european squadrons were green camo
Andrew
FS 36118
You will have to show me a F-15E painted in green… The only green camo painted F-15E that I know of was the MDD prototype. It was actually a F-15B configured for the strike roll and was a demo aircraft only. The only active Strike Eagle’s I have seen were the FS36118 dark gunship gray.
All Production F-15Es are Gunship Gray (FS36118). The nose cone my appear lighter due to fading. The Cockpit will be Dark Gull Gray FS36231
Jim
Like a-10’s, f-15e’s wernt always grey, european squadrons were green camo
The only European Green Strike Eagle was the Demo varsion Tail Number 71-291
Jim
When Hasegawa first released the F-15E , it had a dark green coat. I have the kit instructions somewhere at home.
I found it…check out ‘webaviation.blogspot.com/2008/02/mcdonnel-douglas-f-15-eagle.html’ for a photo of a USAF F-15E from the 494 Expeditionary Fighter Squadron baed at Lakenheath, United Kingdom.
That is true, but Hasegawa’s original release kit represented the demonstrator aircraft which, as described above) was essentially a dressed up “B” model. This aircraft was painted in the “charcoal lizard/Europe One” green and grey scheme. No operational F-15E has worn anything other than Gunship Gray.
The photo referenced, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/USAF_F-15E_Strike_Eagle_Iraq_1999.jpg appears to show a standard Gunship Gray scheme. It is certainly dark, but that is an artifact of the camera averaging the ecposure against the bright background, rendering the aircraft darker than it actually is. If you look at the wing leading efges the shade is quite uniform , as is the highlighted section of the nose from tip to just below the canopy. The horizontal stabs also appear to be a uniform shade. Look at the LGBs (which are green) below the left intake and compare the colour to that of the grey nose alongside. That apparent variation in colour across the top of the left wing is likely a result of fuel spillage from the AAR receptacle.
Thanks everyone for your help! Now all I need to do is find these colors in acrylic (The Testers are all enamel…).
Al
Good luck.
I have a lot of books on the Eagle as it is my favorite aircraft.
It’s not foolproof and can be a bit off sometimes, but you can try going to http://www.paint4models.com/paintchart/paintconversionchart20100101.html# and enter the FS numbers in the search box and select the required paint brands. This should give you the closest matches for the brands selected
Hi Phil,
Thanks for the link! It’s a great site!
Alan
berny and philh, I stand corrected and apologise. I built the monogram eagle (could of sworn it was revell/monogram) back in 89 plus have seen planty of images of green f-15e’s since, so i assumed with the f-15 being far from my priority (tomcats rule :P) that there had been green production strike eagles. Was there ever any real plans to have green strike eagles? I’ve seen prints of 336FS strike eagles in green (they were the first to go operational with the eagle and were based at rammstein until the gulf broke out just as the became operational and they were sent there instead.
IIRC, the 4th TFW out of Seymore Johnson AFB in Norht Carolina was teh first unit to have operational Strike Eagle squadrons, and this was just before ODS. That was about the same time that the Air Force was deciding that the multi color pattern schemes like on transports and bombers faded in to a solitary color at a distance and could best be replaced by one color monotone schemes.
336FS was at the time part of the 4TFW now 4th Operations Group (incorperating 4th FW)
Andrew
Hey Andrew,
No need to apologise, you simply related what you saw. If you were looking at a print rather than aphoto, it could well have been an “artist’s impression” of what the bird was expected to look like.
Indeed, if you look at the pic mentioned earlier by Mechtech, one could be forgiven for thinking it was in green camo. It’s only when you look closely that you see it’s not.
Sometimes even your own eyes can deceive you. For example, back in '93, while passing through Honolulu International, on the long taxi out to the reef runway, I happened to look out towards Hickam AFB (which shares the runways at HNL) and saw several '15’s on the dispersal pads. At the time they appeared to have pale green/grey camo, and I distinctly recall thinking “that makes sense since they will be over water most of the time”. But now, I’m convinced that they were in the standard scheme and what I thought I saw was an artifact of the lighting at the time and/or fading attributable to the salt air and harsh tropical sun. I’ve not found any evidence that such a colour scheme existed or has ever been applied to '15’s.