Had I known that the Navy was gonna do this, and even though I don’t really care to do jets ('Cept for the 1944-53 time-frame), I woulda bought a few of the modern suck-jobs just to paint them like these birds… Guess I still can, but it woulda been better if I’d done a couple during the Centennial, lol…
there are group builds for both the CONA and the Marine Anniversary color schemes over on Zone Five
the designer of some of the schemes posts once in a while on Hyper Scale, look for Lt Dann (not joking),I believe he posts on ARC also, but, I am not sure of that
the 1/48 and 1/32 guys have “got it made” as far as decals,1/72 wound up with a few of the aircraft
you would need to check Two Bobs, Fightertown, Afterburner,and one other that I have forgotten, for the large models,1/72 would be from Mark at Wolf Pack, and maybe Two Bobs
for the prop modelers, this seems to be more of a Jet-Fest,but, there are some props involved,and just to save some searching,the designer of those T-45 Yellow Wing era paint schemes said that those are silver painted, not gray paint,they chose a silver to replicate the “silver doped fabric years”,if you can’t find a CONA sheet of decals for them,the tail codes can be commandeered from the Two Bobs Buckeye decal sheets
The naval officer in charge of this program spoke at our IPMS meeting. He said the Navy would not fund it so they came up with the idea of doing when aircraft came for their regularly scheduled repaints as part of their heavy checks.
Here you go guys-- a much more complete collection of these airframes and many more. The VFA-204 River Rattlers Hornet with the X on the tail is familiar to me–that unit is about an hour from me. When these schemes were done I saw that jet on static display at an air show at NAS New Orleans where they are stationed.
It was pretty big news around here in the modeling community, and on the local news outelts when it was going on. As was last week’s arrival of USS Iowa! I am not one for commemorative schemes most of the time. They are usually garishly way overdone to my eye. But this time they got it right. And the P-3 and S-3 above just look oh so right in the 1942/43 colors… " send ‘enemy carriers’…" Of course the pre Pearl Harbor overall light gray low vis markings is the grand daddy of today’s TPS schemes currently in use.
I may have OD in my blood, but the Navy does know how to put on a show[t$t]
Awesome! The old paint schemes STILL look great! Now for the airforce to follow suit! Imagine a C-130 in OD/NG, insignia blue and white star and bars, and a triangle L on the tail (for example), big sqrdron codes on the fuselage? Awesome!
That being said, there was a C-130 with the in overall grey, with 40’s style star and bars, and it had invasion stripes on the wings.
If you had been at our April IPMS-NCT meeting you would have been able to participate in a slide show presentation of many of the Centennial paint schemes. We have special presentations every month. 2nd Sunday in Irving, TX. Log onto www.ipmsnct.net for more info.
Well this unit sort of does. It’s the current low vis scheme on 100th Air Refueling Wing KC-135 tankers, based out of England. But they pay tribute to their WWII roots of the 100th Bomb Group (“The Bloody 100th”)with their “Square D” tail markings. IIRC, there are a couple B-52 units that do the same.
