I’m mostly a ship guy, but occasionally dabble in airplanes. The latest dabble is Academy’s 1/72 P-51 (North Africa), in which I dropped the flaps and stabilizers (before discovering that the flaps on this model retracted fully when the plane was parked … oh, well).
My question - is there zinc chromate paint on the inside wing and stabilizer edges, or on the adjoining edges of said dropped flaps and stabilizers? The photos I’ve been able to find showing these gaps are in black and white (duh!) and I really can’t tell. I’m reasonably sure it’s not just bare metal, but beyond that any thoughts would be appreciated.
To the best of my knowledge, all interior surfaces were green zinc chromate except the cockpit which was interior green. Inside the flaps, wheel housings, inside of landing gear doors, etc.
Don’t worry that you have flaps down because you are still right. After a P-51 landed and was parked for a while the hydraulic pressure would bleed off and the flaps would gradually fall back down. The same was for the wheel well doors. If you watch a P-51 coming in to land you will notice that the doors are up. After being parked for a while they drop back down too as the hydraulic preesure bleeds away.
So if you model your Stang with flaps down you will still be accurate. Just make sure you position the wheel well doors down also to match…
Mate,
The ends of the flaps and the flap wells were bare aluminium…I’ve never seen a P-51 with any Zinc Chromate in these areas.
The wheel wells were a different matter…generally, the rear face (facing forward) of the wheel wells (which is actually the main wing spar) was often not painted…and the rest of the wheel well was painted…and the inside of the gear doors were more often than not left bare aluminium…
BUT…and there had to be a “but”…sometimes the entire wheel well was painted…and sometimes the inside of the gear foors was painted as well…but mostly, on the 'D" models, the inside of the gear doors was unpainted. Sometimes, the inside of the gear doors on the B’s and the C’s were painted, with the vertical strip running down the centre of the wheel door left natural.
I hope this helps, and wasn’t too confusing.
Wrong. If memory serves me right the kit he is building is a cannon armed photo recon plane and it’s an “A” model. Being an Allison powered mustang, therefore, the hydraulics did not bleed down like the Merlin powered models did. Once the doors and flaps were up they stayed that way unless the ground crew intentionally moved them for maintainance.
About the green, I agree with the post above. All variations are possible as after the plane was in action for a while factory specs went the way of the wind and the ground crews often did and used whatever they had available to complete a job and get the plane flying. Just about whatever combination of ZC and green you want to use could be plausible. In lieu of having the actual airplane to use for reference there is really no way to tell what’s “accurate”.