Dislikable paint schemes and markings

[Taylor Stevenson]

August,

IIRC I don't believe the insignia in 43 has the same dimensions as the modern day insignia due to the lack of the red 'bars' that were added in 1947(?). We looked up the correct specs via the NMUSAF and AF archives and it is correct on my L-5, but we also have examples of original fabric from USAF L-5s and when the red bar was added they beafed up the overall 'bar'. I don't know if that was across the board, but we have seen it.

T

[Jack Cook]

Sorry but I hate the name on glacier girl. Totally authentic P-38F then add that
stupidly styled named on it. a 40s style would have been better!!
All those GTMO T-6s. Show me one real photos of a actual utility marked SNJ!!!
The POF Corsair and that weird tri color scheme!!!
From now on Sharks mouths on all P-40s and all P-51s has CY's after paying his tribute to him!!

[Jesse C.]

First off, all comments are about the art work and paint finishes, nothing the planes themselves.

But one of the noses that really bugs me everytime I see it is Liberty Belle. That just looks so out of place to me and I almost feel like the only thing to make it worse would have been to paint a Corvette up there with all the other muck. The girl looks like something out of Autobuff! Love the plane, hate the artwork.

Now, one that I love looking at and I think was done very nicely is Yankee Lady, it just looks right!

I just wish that some would take into account that not all planes had nose art or pin ups on them. Glacier Girl would have been better off with just plain yellow stencilled letters than the West Coast Customs paint job!

And sharks teeth, shiny paint, cutsey names, yada, yada, yada......

[seabee1526]

I'd love to someday see a Navy "Yellow Wing" fighter, torpedo or dive bomber.

[mlenoch]

Mustang inner gear doors painted green.

[Jack Cook]

Vlado doesn't care if all Mustangs are painted puke blue just has long has the inner gear door aren't green

[Ken]

Here's a new one though -- improperly constructed national insignia ... the correct proportions are repeated in countless books ... I have a minor peeve with aircraft that make WWII paint schemes seem more colorful than they really were by mixing and matching elements from different places and times ... I dislike nose art that looks as if it was painted by an amateur skateboard or custom van airbrush artist ... ETO call letters replaced by the owner's initials are thankfully much more rare than in the past, but there are still a few around ... A lot of the planes coming out of the shops today are really meticulously done.

Glacier Girl would have been better off with just plain yellow stencilled letters than the West Coast Customs paint job!

You two rock!

[Speedy]

I know it's kind of taking a tangent off the original topic of the thread (which I kind of actually enjoyed reading), but I want to comment on what a few have said about nose art on planes these days.

Makes me roll my eyes to see somebody who has taken their T-6, BT-13, Navion, or whatever, and put some truly garish nose art on it. First off...most of the aircraft that had real nose-art in 'the big war' were COMBAT aircraft, right? But you see some pseudo-L-17 with invasion stripes with a HUGE nude waving an American flag or something, or a T-6 with the entire nose panel filled with some 'modern' pin-up, and it kind of defeats the purpose and spirit of crews putting nose art on their aircraft in the field.

Most of the photos I've seen from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc., the nose art looks somewhat primitive...like it was put on by 'amateurs', out in the open, with whatever paint they had. Even if they were 'copies' of pin-ups out of Saturday Evening Post, Life, or whatever magazine, they still had that amateur look of being 'copied' about them. They weren't perfect looking. Rarely were they optimistic, either. While it may be an 'ode' to a girlfriend back home, or something...it usually is personal for someone on the crew--where they were from, commenting on a particular 'quirk' of that airframe, or filled with sarcasm.

I LIKE the old, 'real' nose art because it was a reflection of something/someone. Some of the modern stuff (like someone commented on the Tigercats) is just putting nose art on because it's a warbird and, well...it must warrant some nose art.


Okay. Carry on....

[Brad]

Someday I hope I'm lucky enough to buy another airplane. If it is a warbird I'm gonna paint it purple and red with green polka dots and my initials on the vertical fin. It will have sharks teeth, mismatched national insignia on all sides and wings and stencils written with a sharpie marker. Of course I will have to put nose art on it so I will put a naked picture of my neighbors. Fat ex wife and name the plane " yes I know it is wrong but its mine, I did this to piss yall off, if you don't like it feel free to pay for me to do it right or better yet buy your own and paint it how you want, but no matter how well its done somebody is gonna whine about it on the internet anyhow, either way please feel free to pucker up and kiss me where the skin turns pink" or something like that.


Truthfully if I had a P-40 I would have to put teeth on it and name it after my daughter. It just seems right to me.

[TonyM]

Nose art, Pin-ups or Clever WWII style Aircraft names on training aircraft like BT-13s looks ridiculous.

There are a couple of those around.

But to each his own.

TM

[Speedy]

Someday I hope I'm lucky enough to buy another airplane. If it is a warbird I'm gonna paint it purple and red with green polka dots and my initials on the vertical fin. It will have sharks teeth, mismatched national insignia on all sides and wings and stencils written with a sharpie marker. Of course I will have to put nose art on it so I will put a naked picture of my neighbors. Fat ex wife and name the plane " yes I know it is wrong but its mine, I did this to piss yall off, if you don't like it feel free to pay for me to do it right or better yet buy your own and paint it how you want, but no matter how well its done somebody is gonna whine about it on the internet anyhow, either way please feel free to pucker up and kiss me where the skin turns pink" or something like that.


Truthfully if I had a P-40 I would have to put teeth on it and name it after my daughter. It just seems right to me.

Didn't Ken Burnstine do that with his P-51 already? BEST PAINT JOB EVER on a Mustang, in my opinion!!!!

As for the name of your airplane...man, it's gonna have to go down the side of the whole fuselage kinda like Kermit Week's B-24 used to be painted like. Or the lettering is gonna have to be really, really small.

[MKD1966]

Mustang inner gear doors painted green.

Vlado - I have to ask just because I love the mustang and curious about this... I see some beautiful mustangs coming out of some well known restoration shops with the inner gear doors painted green... Do you think it's just the owners preferrence as to what colors they choose ? Like I said - just curious because I'm a big mustang fan... Thank you,
Mike

[k5083]

August,

IIRC I don't believe the insignia in 43 has the same dimensions as the modern day insignia due to the lack of the red 'bars' that were added in 1947(?). We looked up the correct specs via the NMUSAF and AF archives and it is correct on my L-5, but we also have examples of original fabric from USAF L-5s and when the red bar was added they beafed up the overall 'bar'. I don't know if that was across the board, but we have seen it.

T

Officially (and, 99.99% of the time, in actual application), it has always been the same. See the USAF's official site at http://www.af.mil/art/mediagallery.asp?galleryID=141 for the current insignia. Take out the red stripes and you have the 1944 insignia; change the surround to red and you have 1943. (Note the AF site also shows the modern low-viz "outline" variation which DOES change the proportions, but I'm talking about the non-outline ones.) See also Mikesh's "Restoring Museum Aircraft" (this is one of his peeves as well).

The most common error is to thicken the white bar so that its vertical centerline aligns with that of the star, assuming incorrectly that the overall insignia shape is vertically symmetrical. This was the error made by Lockheed employees on the XP-80 and faithfully recreated by the Smithsonian.

August

[DarenC1]

ETO call letters replaced by the owner's initials are thankfully much more rare than in the past, but there are still a few around (e.g. Spitfire T-B). This is especially vexing because in the wartime RAF, this was a privilege granted to Wing Leaders, so owners who do this are giving themselves quite an exalted, and un-earned, rank.

I'm not too sure about this, but I think I read somewhere that the paintscheme WAS authentic - there just so happened to be a Spit Vc with the letters "T-B" on it in that squadron.

However, as the Spitfire in question has been repainted, it's a moot point....

[goshikisen]

(Second worst: Helvetica or other modern fonts used for serials and other markings on display aircraft, especially a certain B-17F!)

The modern font issue gets my hackles up as well... the CF-105 Arrow recreation at the Toronto Aerospace Museum uses a modern font for the "RL203" code on the aircraft. It looks especially wrong because it's large numbers on a white background. The odd thing is you can find free versions of the appropriate RCAF font online quite easily.