What color were the hellcats painted? Also what ModelMaster or Tamiya color matches it best?
Thanks in advance,
Well, it depends. The first Hellcats were painted in the older blue-gray over light gray that was used on the older Wildcat. Later the paint job was changed to a top color of flat sea blue, middle color of intermediate blue, and white bottom. Towards the end of the war in 1944 Hellcats were delivered in overall glossy sea blue. The last two were the most common seen on operational Hellcats. Model Master makes all of these colors with the same names as the ones above so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding them. BTW- I like your little Stewie cartoon. I love that show!
There were some Hellcats done in the blue grey over light grey scheme but by the time they were getting delivered the standard for navey aircraft was the tri-colour scheme Non-specular sea blue, intermediate blue and flat white (like the one in my sig). When the F6F-5’s started being delivered the standard was changed to overall gloss sea-blue.
As a general rule, if you’re doing an F6F-3 it’ll be tri colour scheme. If you’re doing a F6F-5 it’ll be overall gloss sea-blue. There are exceptions to this rule, but not many.
I kit I got is for one on the yorktown and it says to paint the bottom white and the top blueish gray, is this accurate?
Does it have a model number for the hellcat? like F6F-3 or F6F-5
depends, if you are modelling the first hellcats to be flown off the Yorktown in August 1943 then either one would probably work, if you just want to model an aircraft that defnitely was painted like one on the Yorktown at some given point, the tricolor scheme is probably what you want. Here is a good closeup of it for reference…
Actually I just found a link for you, it shows all three schemes and when they would have been used on that type… If your instructions comes with a synopsis for the plane, it usuallt says in there "Markings for F6F-3 flown by Capt. Joe Blow on the USS Yorktown Jan, 1944 or some such, sometimes it’s on the side of the box too… then the choice would be easy!!
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/christophe.arribat/profil/f6f/f6f.html
The first F6Fs (-3s) were grey and white with the blue circle/white star national insignia in six places. Flatley was the CAG of the first air group to fly from Yorktown in May 1943 and his aircraft is the one depicted in tho9900’s reference above in this basic scheme, except that these aircraft originally had the gun barrel fairings. The three tone camouflage had already been edicted, however, and field interpretations beginning to appear. The national insignia was also changed in late June 1943 to add the white bars and red outline and reduce the number of locations to four, also a modification that was implemented in the field before the “factory” version became better known. Flatley’s second F6F-3 had an interpretation of the three tone scheme and the new insignia by the end of August when they first went in to combat.
Yeah it says on the box that it was flown at the Marinas Turkey shoot.
The kit is an old Match box kit that I got for $3.94 at the LHS
The Marianas Turkey Shoot occurred in June 1944. All the Hellcats would have been in the standard three tone camouflage with the all-blue Hellcats yet to arrive in the fleet…