Kind of a dumb question, but on P-51 B/D’s with D-Day Invasion Stripes were the racks painted along with the bottom of the wing or were they left in natural metal ? I’ve looked at some of the pics in my collection but can’t see enough to be sure. I’m finishing up painting one for the D-Day Group Build & would like to be as accurate as possible. In past builds, I left em bare metal with the assumption that paint might have interfered with the release mechanism, but not absolutely sure that’s correct. Any help would be appreciated.
Regards, Rick
The racks were removable. In some cases the ground crews had time to remove them, paint and replace them before the a/c returned to ops. Sometimes they just simply painted over them. No big deal.
I just happened today to see a pretty common piece of stock D-Day film showing Gooneys having the stripes applied. It shows ground crews slapping them on fast as they can with paint brushes and free-hand sloppy as can be. We as modelers all learn about this fact early on, but I’ve never known a modeler good enough with paint to depict that hasty sloppiness for what it was, without making the model look as though the modeler simply didn’t know how to paint a straight line. I mean, those stripes, on D-day, were AWFUL. Later, especially fighter pilots and their crew chiefs, who took their a/c so personally, in many cases they went back painted the stripes carefully to spec. But have you ever seen a full D-Day invasion stripe decal with sloppy edges?