Yes, I know, this question seems to come up every week at least. But here it is again and I should know the answers by heart at this point, but I don’t. My assignment is to build a late Korean War F-86F-30 using the Hasegawa kit with the color Eduard set (I know, if feels like…well, like cheating or betraying our craft or otherwise like I’m doing something wrong. But once you get a look at a grab handle with the perfect diagonal yellow-and-black stripes, the guilt sort of goes away. And, it comes with a beautiful set of dropped flaps.)
But to the question: I’ve seen early war A models with all back cockpits with interior green floors, pedals and sticks, but then, I’ve seen immediate post war Sabres, Fs and H models mostly, with what became the standard all over FS 36321 gray in the office, including the seat. This scheme was followed through the Century Series, though some had black seats. But what about my late war -30? What is the appropriate color? And if memory serves, aren’t the wheel wells interior green with natural metal on the inside of the doors? I’m going to close the air brakes, probably, but aren’t they natural metal inside and out? I remember our Canadair Sabres at the museum flew with NM inside the air brakes, with the actuator having a glossy, medium-to-light gray shade to it, but that was the only color in there aside from the little color markings on the various hydrolic and electrical lines which denoted their functions. And, with the flaps dropped, do they have any color on the inside? Any kind of red warning stripes?
Can any of you Sabre experts help a poor modeler out here?
Tom
Tom:
Certainly no expert here, but I was able to find this out there on the web.
http://walkarounds.home.sapo.pt/sabre.htm
I tried to get a translated version of the page posted but for some reason it wouldn’t work.
Hope the pics can help you get some answers you need
Hi Tom,
I’m not a Sabre expert, but I stayed at Holiday Inn Express last night. [;)]
The gear wells look like they were dark Interior Green, like on the F-100. The green on the Hun looks close to the Medium Green used in the Vietnam camouflage scheme. The interiors of the speed brake wells were Interior Green, with silver or grey actuators (can’t tell which from the photo I have), and silver hydraulic lines. The interiors of the gear doors and speed brakes were silver.
The red warning stripes on the flaps don’t appear to go into the wing. They stop right at the edge of the wing when the flap is retracted. If that last bit doesn’t make any sense, let me know and I’ll try to confuse things even more.
In the color photos of F-86Fs in Robert Dorr’s “Inside the Great Jet-Fighters” it looks like the cockpits were still black late in the war.
Feel free to give me a shout offline if I can be of any more help.
Cheers!
Ben
Thanks Warlock. Those Portugese birds in that walkaround are painted in ADC (or Aircraft) Gray, 16473, and darned if the inside of the speed brakes and the wells aren’t painted black. There is a reason that the U.S. Navy has long used white for these areas, and the US Air Force finally got around to painting these and the wheel wells white inside: so you can see if hydrolic fluid is leaking and you can spot FOD, or a crack in a component in there easier. It’s sort of a no-brainer. I don’t know if the Air Force finally found a non corrosive white, or why it took them so long to start painting the really imporant external areas of the airplane in white (I think, at least on tactical a/c, it started with the F-15) so that bad things can be spotted at a glance before somebody gets hurt, at least in theory. The short period of black cockpits in the post-war and Korea era was an anti-glare measure, but the problem there is that when someone is trying to kill you at 500 knots or you are in an inverted flat spin, you need to be able to find this or that switch, nob or dial really quick, and if everything is black it makes it a little harder, so 36321 flat gray was a nice compromise, with everything above the working part of the office – canopy interior, sills, etc. painted black. Now, it may be cheaper, and it may make tactical sense, but I sure miss airplanes with some color to them, and that’s all I model. I don’t touch low-viz machines unless it’s a commission or otherwise being done for a friend. But that’s just me. Some people couldn’t care less about color, and are more intrigued by pure aerodynamic shapes (I’m talking about modelers here, not pilots. Or pilots who are making models at the moment or…forget it.)
Tom
The headrest is olive drab, the cockpit details, such as the instrument panel, and seat, are flat black. The seat cushions are olive drab. The rest I don’t know, because it was a die cast model, and the pilot blocked the veiw of most details.
Ghostrider