I’m right now building a USN F/A-18E CAG VFA-27 Royal maces Super Hornet. The main question I have is I’m going to make a diorama out of it with it on the cat ready togo. but how weathered do USN aircraft or CAG aircraft actually get? Do they look so dirty liiekmost model builders show, my opinion is no. now the only weathering I might do is add some light color to the top of the wings since its been out on deck exposed to the sun. Is that right to do, or are USn and CAG planes never weathered, and cleaned off before each flight?
Also do CAG aircraft see combat? i’ve only seen some armed with weapons. So I wonder do they ever enter a combat zone ready to fight, or are they just for display looking colorful.
What they look like going out and the appearence coming home will make you wonder if it really is the same aircraft. Aircraft are built of specialized materials, the majority of which are greatly affected by water, especially sea water. Corrosion control is a daily chore and freshly painted patches the norm. It kind of looks like digital camo without a pattern [:)].
That said, the CAG bird always received the “special attention”. A CAG bird will be sortied, but will be the last in line. It has the colorful markings as tradition, remembering the “yellow wing” days of naval aviation. It always has the “double nuts” number-100, 200.
Remember no one really drives their “own” bird. You might never find yourself in the plane with your name stencilled on it. Aircraft are made ready, crew is assigned, ordnance loaded, and the mission begins. First come, first crewed.
If she is ready for launch then she’d be spruced up to look new, with some light spots here and there to show where paint has been touched up ( and do you know where most of the times those spots are located), correct?
A normal squadron pilot could fly the CAG bird on a sortie (like Duke Cunningham did scoring his 3rd, 4th, and 5th kills) so they do load up with ordanance and go out on sorties, right?
#1. yup except mostly the touch up spots will be a little bit darker as the base fades. Think panel lines, access doors, gear doors. anywhere there are rivets.
Most of the time, my understanding is anyway, that USN squadrons are allowed two “Show Birds,” that carry the more elaborate markings. Usually, of course, this is the CAG 00 bird and often the 01 a/c assigned to the CO.
I’ve noticed differences with other numbered birds getting the show paint. VF-103 for instance dresses up the 103 bird to tie in the squadron number.
As you look through photos on the Navy’s news web site, www. news.navy.mil, you can see that some squadrons tend to keep their show birds a little cleaner than others, as the deployments go on. I imagine it depends on the CO, or the individual plane captains.
As always, the best guess can be made by looking at the operational photos available and going from there.
Plane Captains are supposed to wipe down the aircraft between sorties, or at the very least, daily when OPTEMPO dictates no time between sorties. They have a special spray they can use to make it easier for cleaning the tactical paint schemes used today; it comes in a spray can.
Every week or so, or when the aircraft is “hard down” and needs some major repairs typically the corrosion control crew will inspect the aircraft looking for areas that need some attention. They’ll sand/scuff the area and repaint to ensure the corrosion is removed and fresh paint is applied to protect the metal. As one poster mentioned, by the end of a deployment they sort of look like digital camo. I used to refer to it as “leopard” and it was a good way to quickly confirm that a squadron was performing corrosion control properly. If, after 6 months at sea any aircraft, even the CAG bird, looked like new then the overpainting basically was hiding issues. That doesn’t mean the CAG bird’s colors couldn’t be retouched. They were and relative to the other aircraft it still looked the best, just not “new”.
I also believe that most weathering of USN aircraft is overdone. The only time a bird looks as tired and weathered as some models is when there have been continuous operations for weeks without a decent break to do maintenance…and that never happens with our modern systems. During OIF/OEF there were multiple air wings around to ensure each wing got a break every few days to do maintenance. Some weathering is good, but not too much.
I agree with Greenshirt. Though they got real dirty, you could expect to see at least one or more aircraft get a full washdown during the night shift. On no fly days, lots of aircraft got washed. They were kept as clean as possible.
Here’s an example of the PCs spot cleaning an aircraft with the spray cans.
Here’s how the CAG birds looked at any one time on the Ranger when I was on board and 201 during the fly off after the ODS cruise that lasted 6 months.
I concur with what has been posted, but would add a few comments for general info. From what I have experienced, the condition of navy aircraft varies from “era” to era. While the OEF/OIF birds appear to be pretty well kept, if you’re modeling something from the Viet Nam era (shipboard) the op tempo was such that the aircraft got pretty grungy. CAG’s bird may have gotten a little more attention, but probably only when he flew it. The comment about over-weathering was also appropriate, paricularly as it relates to panel lines. Many models appearing in FSM are way overdone. Weathering of naval aircraft essentially involved fading paint on upper surfaces (depending on how long it had been since their last depot-level rework) and abraded paint on leading edges, radomes, etc. An airplane that looked “used” normally had greasy prints around access panels frequently used by the maintenance types to service the a/c and, in general, anywhere the ordies or handlers may have laid their paws on the aircraft. Maybe some hydraulic fluid stains on struts, in wheel wells, etc. The white undersides of navy aircraft in particluar showed a lot of dirt. But every panel line didn’t “pop”. The technique I use is to lightly dry brush graphite shaved from a #2 pencil in areas where the a/c might be expected to show dirt, muzzle blasts, etc. and to lightly pick out panel lines. Use a tissue to smudge or soften the effect. If you goof, a soft eraser cleans up the mess.
