Rick,
Thanks again for some excellent information.
I never realized that the camo pattern was not freehanded.
I guess I will use soft-masks when I do mine then.
Mike
Field Drab FS30118 would be a close match to the DuPont brown but Dark Tan FS30219 looks better visually (weathered!). FS34092 is just a tad little dark for the DuPont green. It is well documented that Curtiss used the two DuPont colors for the top, but there is no definitive answer as to what color Curtiss used for the bottom. Curtiss was supposed to use Sky according to instruction but for some reason Curtiss interpreted Sky as a gray color nowhere even close to the British specification. From interviews of all first hand accounts, the bottom was painted in some sort of gray without any hint of green or blue in Sky. (Sky was often confused with duckegg blue). It wouldn’t be wrong to choose any of the number of light to medium grays for the bottom until some document turns up from Curtiss showing what paint they used on the bottom. There’s actually a lot of lattitude in the colors to use for a AVG P-40B/C as the bottom color is not really known, and the top colors tended to weather heavily in the climate and condition the AVG operated in. Even the model designation is a little controversial as the aircrafts came from C production lots but were built to B specification.
An ironic thing about the rubber matts is that recent research has turned up evidence that Spitfires were not painted with rubber mats or masking, but rather sprayed with a very tight freehand pattern with minimum overspray. Curtiss was following British specifications to the letter in using the mats.
Testors doesn’t seem to have a Medium Green 42 color in the Model Master II line.
I wondered about that. I knew that the AVG P-40’s came from an assembly line destined for the RAF but I couldn’t understand why they were reportedly gray on the bottom while all the RAF planes at the time were light blue on the bottom.
Wonder how they handled field repairs. I just can’t see them fooling with paint mats or masking over there, but all of the pictures I’ve seen tend to show that same sharp demarcation.
Good info. Thanks for passing it along.
Brush painting would give a fairly sharp demarcation too.