Dana M Bell wrote:
Hi Sean,
What I meant was that the restoration looks very nice, but that it doesn't accurately depict a camouflage scheme applied to the C-47 in World War 2. The aircraft were painted Dark Olive Drab at the factory, with the paint supplied by several manufacturers. Since the tail planes, outer wing panels, and other subassemblies were painted by subcontractors before construction of the final aircraft, these subassemblies rarely resembled the main fuselage.
As the paint weathered, portions of the fuselage and inner wing panels often faded to a brown, but the rest of the aircraft didn't. Earth Brown No 5 confuses me - the Corps of Engineers used Earth Brown No 7 and Earth Red No 5, but neither color was applied to C-47s. No C-47 was ever painted overall brown on the upper surfaces and sides.
Most of the photos of 1st ACG C-47s show the standard Medium Green disruptive pattern on leading and trailing edges of flying surfaces, but there were always exceptions. Their restoration must have been based on one of the exceptions.
I've been involved with a few restoration projects over the past 45 years, but I'm still amazed how much work goes into these incredible restorations, only to see them painted in poorly researched schemes. Somehow this one bothered me more than most of the others.
Cheers,
Dana
Ahh. Gotcha. Even tho the article says earth brown, the colour looks olive drabby ( that is my new word for the day. Drabby) to me. I do agree it needs the dark green splotches. I love that look on planes. Be interesting to see what aircraft they paint it up as. Plus they mentioned nose art, so they must have a specific aircraft in mind. I am excited to see this at ToM this fall.
Sean