Warbird Information Exchange

Fight2FlyPhoto, thanks for the updated pictures. I am looking forward to Monday

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Great pics, Jason. I'm gonna hop up there after work today.

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-Al Sauer
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spookythecat

It used to be we whined about a paint job not being historically accurate. Now we whine about them not being historically accurate for a particular airframe. What will we whine about when owners start doing the latter? I'm sure we will find something.

I can't agree more. If every warbird owner and museum placed their aircraft in their actual schemes, we would have a lot of boring silver airplanes that do not fully honor those who flew them when they were doing this for real. I see nothing wrong with this gentleman painting his airplane in AVG scheme. If anything he may have the most authentic AVG P-40 out there. I don't mind representative schemes just so they are accurate. And this one is dead on.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

"Look, if you have enough money to restore the airplane to be exactly as it was when it saw action you should surely be able to afford to clone the original pilot."

-Tim

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Keep 'em Flying.

@ C Veich's comment: Probably not very much. Or probably something. It really doesn't matter as standards change over time. A nice car in 1920 was a model T, but few would be caught (dead? ) driving one on the interstate today. Just becuase the standards for restoring warbirds has gone up, thanks in very large part to people like Paul Allen, doesn't mean that you stop trying to raise your standards as your comment would suggest we do, does it?

@ mustangdriver's comment: I think you may've missed the point somewhat. If we were talking about a C-47 that served stateside the entire war, your point might be more relevant in this case, (even though I think the typical "line" aircraft have just as important story to tell as the flashier ones--that is, it ain't all droppin bombs, someone has to haul them to the front line and those veterans are just as important as the guys on the tip of the spear).

To take the leap and say this P-40 wouldn't have an interesting paintjob if it were painted as it fought in WWII (which so many flying warbirds did not) completely overlooks this airplane's unique (and I mean that in it's true definition: THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD) history. Certainly you can see how it would also be pretty awesome to have this airplane in the colors it has been proven that it fought in during the war we spend so much time here discussing? How often does Paul Allen or anyone for that matter, have the opportunity to do that? Not very. Once again, if this were a late model P-40 that was a training bird, great, paint it however. But that isn't this plane.

Consider this: If some Russian oligarch owned the Memphis Belle and decided to restore it completely...then paint it as one of the B-17s used by the Soviets after the shuttle bombing missions would everyone stay mum? What if it was the Doolittle B-25 of Vladivostok recovered, restored then painted in soviet colors? What if Richard Branson got ahold of Lady Be Good, freshly restored it and put it in Coastal Command sub-hunter colors? Would you still say, "his plane, paint it as he wishes?"

Of course he can paint it as he wants. His plane, his money. But that's just a way of avoiding discussion about what history is worth preserving, and how ones chooses to do it. And I think these discussions do change minds and make a difference by circulating throughout the warbird community. If they didn't, I'd bet we'd still have a lot of airplanes in the 50-70s civi paint jobs.

Once again, all kudos to Paul Allen and FHC, this is an awesome plane in an awesome collection. Were it not for him, we wouldn't even be having this dicussion, at least about P-40Cs

Who's to say that it won't happen some day? The airplane is beautifully restored and maintained and, with any luck, will be with us for many, many years to come. Certainly a repaint, or multiple repaints, could be in its future.

I wasn't compaining..quite the opposite. I actually think replicating the mismatched paint adds a nice touch of realism.

SN

Actually, the kudos in this case should go to Stephen Grey. He was the one that brought the aircraft out of Russia, then had it restored by Fighter Rebuilders. Paul Allen, in this instance, just wrote the cheque after the hard work had already been done!

A little AVG paint and makings trivia for the purists.

Curtiss didn’t use colors matched to British Ministry of Aircraft Production standards for the early RAF P-40 orders. Instead they utilized equivalents from the DuPont catalog. The choices for Dark Green and Dark Earth were reasonably close. The undersurfaces, however, were a light grey color because there was no DuPoint equivalent for Sky. Of the choices available, Curtiss elected to use DuPont’s equivalent for Sky Grey.

The camouflage pattern was applied using rubber masks. The masks had reference marks for placing the British national markings. If you were to add an RAF fin flash to the vertical stab, the camouflage would suddenly match nicely. There are also arcs in the camouflage pattern of the wing upper surfaces for the placement of the RAF wing roundels.

From what I’m seeing in Fight2FlyPhoto’s pics, FHC did their homework on the scheme they selected. I think she looks beautiful!

Thanks for the interesting and educated post, Wilson.
Chris...

Well done to the "paint detective"....

I like that P-40C as a FT bird not some P-40N for example...

You're 100% correct and I actually thought about including that possiblity in my initial response. But the fact that they're having someone hand paint the art leads me to believe it's probably going to stay this way for some time and even though the AVG scheme really is a knock out, it seems like a lost opporunity. Having been up to FHC a couple times, and hopefully will go a couple more times in the future, they have pretty good displays and I'd imagine they'll tell the tale of this P-40s journey well, which makes a huge difference.

And Mike, thanks for the info on Stephen Grey. Just goes to show that you don't need Paul Allen bucks to make things happen. Sometimes, a substantial amount of passion will make a huge difference.

It is also important to point out that the display board in front of each aircraft has a brief history about that particular plane. And the docents have a great deal of knowledge about their history as well. In no way is this aircraft's actual heritage forgotten. It's an opportunity to provide TWO unique histories at once.

I wont' argue with that point Stang, at least in the sense that it's probably a lost opportunity for the current generations. You never know though. As tiresome as AVG painted Warhawks have become ( or at least pseudo AVG) at least we are finally getting to see a proper AVG scheme on the correct model of P-40!