Hey Kaysee...

Use the internet...just search for the plane you are looking for chances are you will find lots o' info. Look at the images section in yahoo or google...saves time of picking thru the webpage. Also reference guided like the "Walk around " series...Squadron has lots available...get their flyer and see.

 Check out www.j-aircraft.com great site for Japanese reference....

When all else fails...wing it!!!! Accuaracy is in the minds eye...once you see the pics you will see that most pits are basically the same.

Carlos

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FINISHED........
taking a break from Floaties...next:
"...Oh give me a home where the____roam..."

You can usually find photos of most aircraft's cockpits on the Internet. Googling Farley Fruitbat walkaround' or 'Farley Fruitbat cockpit' usually comes up with the goods. 

Other than that, there's nothing wrong with a bit of guesswork, especially if you're going to have the canopy closed....

Cheers,

Chris.

Real airplane cockpits aren't quite as colorful as many modelers make them out to be. A few red handles or big switches may be in there, a placard or two, but in general there doesn't seem to be a lot of color coding. Black knobs and silver toggle switches are the norm. Pilots and crew know their interiors more by feel than by what color things are. Red warning lights don't show up as bright red unless they're on, and they wouldn't be on unless the the engine is running and somebody's in the cockpit. Check reference photos.

My biggest pet peeve with cockpits is those who give the instruments chromish looking bezels. Thats fine for a sports car but not for aircraft.

There are a few things that are required to be colored, but as said many of the indicators are not visible until they are illuminated. The more modern the cockpit the less flip type switches and more touch or push button ones there are. 

The seems to be some artistic license taken by those who don't have proper references or...its their model and they build it the way they want to.

As far as World War II aircraft go, (i.e., your Wildcat & Zero), there are many references to choose from, and the kit's color painting suggestions are not always accurate.  I have been a volunteer in many WWII & cold war era aircraft restorations, and there are some general rules of thumb to follow:

1.  There is no one single color as "zinc chromate".  Zinc chromate (and several other anticorrosive paints and platings) came in a variety of shades & colors.  I have seen wide variations in this in US aircraft, from a deep green to a bright apple yellow.  Often a single aircraft will have many shades of zinc chromate on its various parts.

2.  Generally speaking, anything painted bright red is a saftey item (i.e., a canopy lock/release lever, manual landing gear/flap extension, flight control locks, etc), an emergency use only item (i.e., fire extinguishing, emergency stores jettison, etc), or a saftey/guarded system (weapons/guns arm, etc.).  Modern jet aircraft tend to use yellow for ejection seat/canopy jettison items.

3.  Many parts of World War II aircraft were of phenolic construction, a compressed wood fiber & resin composite.  It is usually of a reddish brown color, and it was used for control cable pulleys & guide blocks, among other things.  Nearly every WWII US aircraft cockpit has some phenolic components, and this is a detail often missed by modelers.

4. Japanese and German aircraft varied greatly in the materials used in their construction.  A prewar or early war Japanese aircraft was given much greater anticorrision protection than a late war production aircraft, which is one reason so few survive today.  Many parts originally made of metal were made of wood in later years & often left unpainted.  German aircraft, too, utilized a lot of wood in later production aircraft.

4.  Japanese aircraft interiors are not one color, either-they ranged from a vivid transparent blue over natural aluminum color to a transparent green over silver to a solid, nontransparent pale green. The transparent green & solid pale green were often used together on the same aircraft.  I worked on the restoration of an early war naval Zero that had a pale green instrument panel, cockpit floor, control stick, rudder pedals, & cockpit sidewalls, but the aircraft strucure for the gun mounts forward of the instrument panel (and the rear of the firewall) were the transparent green over aluminum. Check your references carefully.

For a nice bit on U.S. interior colors during WWII, see the Dana Bell article  in the October, 1997 'Fine Scale Modeler'. See also 

 http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2004/02/stuff_eng_interior_colours_us_part2.htm

This is part two of a three part series covering USAAF and Navy interior colors.

 For real live pictures of mostly WWII cockpits: "Cockpit. An illustrated history of World War II Aircraft Interiors" By Donald Nijboer ( who also did "Gunner", about gun turrets, in case you need to know about that. and may have done "Cockpits of the Cold War" for aircraft after WWII. Don't have my copy handy, so may have been by someone else.

See also "At the Controls: The Smitsonian National Air and Space Museum Book of Cockpits", which covers cockpits from the Wright Flier to the Shuttle.

 Be wary of restored aircraft colors:  the colors may have been chosen to keep the aircraft preserved and protected, and may be only close to accurate. there may also be additional radio and navaigation gear currently required by law that was not in the original aircraft.

Hope this helped.

Joe