Douglas D-558-1 Skystreak

[The Inspector]

The seam in the fuselage just behind the windshields is how the pilot was supposed to escape if things went wonkie. He pulled a handle and the entire nose came off and the happy pilot then pushed away from the airplane and parachuted to safety-smiles all around.
The same sort of escape system was built into the BELL X-2, Mel Apt in the X-2 got as far as detaching the nose cone and wound up riding it into the desert at the end of his MACH 3 FLIGHT. The WW2 Bachem NATTER rocket fighter had the same design.

[toniosky]

The following pictures were taken in August 1986 at Quantico. The paint layers appeared to be a base coat of blue-gray primer, gloss insignia red used for initial trials, and the final gloss white topcoat used during it's NACA testing. I hope this helps.

Reno64,

You are AWE-SOME !! These are exactly the pictures I was looking for !!!! THANK YOU !

I also received pictures from Leon that will help me a lot for my modelling project.

I love the guys on this forum !


I am really surprised by this "blue primer", was this kind of primer popular back in the days? I never saw anything like that on American A/C.

Thanks !

Antoine

[reno64]

I have examined some of the paint flakes I gathered that day (the ground was covered in chips of peeling paint) and believe that the base coat is a gray (rather than blue) primer, similar to automotive primer. My guess is that Douglas wanted the smoothest finish possible, since the D-558-I was intended for high speed flight, and used the primer to ensure that seams were minimized as well providind a good base for the high gloss red finish, much like modellers use of a primer before a finish coat. The NACA white was applied right over the original red, with no intermediate layer.

Good luck on your model.

[toniosky]

Thanks Reno64 for your feedback, you are very helpful for my project. I thought at first that it was some oxydized aluminium .

Cheers,

Antoine