Marines (Not a Navy) Cobra

Cobrahistorian,

You have anyting on this one?

I know of no US Navy cobra's, could it have been a Marine cobra. Also several foriegn navy's use Cobra's in the anti-shipping role

Have to agree with John here. US Navy doesn't use Cobras. Only Cobras left are in USMC service. There may still be a few in the Army National Guard/Reserve as well. None in the US Navy though, never have been.

Wops, sry for missleading and thx for replies.
I am down in the cellar again digging out my boxed FSM magazines, will post pic when I find it :D
The snake was deffo Grey but now when I am now challenged with bad memory the second sceme might have have been sand...
Back to the boxes...

I've got a picture I took a few years back of an USMC AH-1W that is painted in shades of grey. Could this be the one your looking for? (not the pic but the scheme)

The Navy operates Cobras in two squadrons. one is VX-9 at China Lake and the other is at Pax river Maryland. I know an Ordnanceman who used to be with VX-4 at China Lake (VX-4 & VX-5 have since merged forming VX-9). he used to load new ordnance under test and evaluation. usually Marine birds are identified as such, however I wouldn't be susprised if "NAVY" found it's way on to a USMC bird.

IYAOYAS!!!!

Only Cobras I know of in Naval service were Spanish Navy AH-1Gs - they were blue.
As stated above, USMC Cobras used at the USN VX squadrons have Navy squadron tail letters and could have"Navy" painted on the side. It is not uncommon for a tailboom to get replaced and have it not match the scheme on the rest of the aircraft. However, different shades of gray would have been rare. I can think of only one squadron that used a gray scheme that deviated from the standard and all of those aircraft were repainted within a few months and they didn't get anywhere near Ethiopia. The aircraft with the Navy VX squadrons do not deploy overseas. It is possible that one of those aircraft could get transfered back to a USMC squadron but I would highly doubt that one of the VX aircraft would find its way to Ethiopia still wearing that paint scheme. The USMC has done a few operations off the coast of Ethiopia during the time period you suggest. Was the photo on a ship?

Out of the literally thousands of Cobra pictures that I have, here is the closest thing I have: a Marine AH-1W attached to a Navy squadron (VX-9) with Navy tail letters. This aircraft was with HMLA-369 (a Marine squadron) in Desert Storm. It is still wearing the remants of their Desert Storm paint scheme. Photo taken in California, USA during the early 90's. Not my photo - sorry I don't have a source to credit.

Edited: I put up the wrong picture. That is not the VX-9 China Lake squadron tailcode. That is a Marine squadron (HMM-166). Somewheere around here I think I have a picture with Navy on the tail.

Here at Patuxent River NAS in Maryland our helo test squadron is HX-21, which is known here as just "Rotary Wing". They operate pretty much every type of Navy and Marine helo, both legacy and those in development. All the Marine helos, including AH-1W's, AH-1Z's and UH-1N's & Y's are marked with MARINES on them, not NAVY. Of course, I can't say that they never carried Navy markings, just that they haven't since I have been here. We even have a retired AH-1J in our museum here, it is also marked with MARINES. It spent it's entire career as a T&E aircraft, and all the pictures I could find of it from various tests show Marine markings. As for tail codes, I'm not even sure what the tail code for HX-21 is, I walked through the hanger and couldn't find a single helo with a tail code. Never noticed that before.

Phil

OK, I take on my dumb goofs hat and humbly excuse myself for having misslead you.
Thank you all for digging into this subject trying to help me out, and please excuse me for all missleading information.
My memory is not what it used to be...
The picture I refeered to was published in Scale Models International, April 1994.
Author was Malcolm Hopper, on the subject "The Cobra's Bite!"
All photos by Malcolm Hopper.
Its a Marines Cobra, 160800 121 (tail marking prolly incorrect), HMLA 367
Will scan the pic and post it iff its OK with FSM.
Aint got a clue where i gott Etiopia from...again, thanks for your efforts guys!

I don't think you were misleading anyone. You had a question that needed an answer. That's what the folks in the forum are great at...answering questions.

Thx Dragonfire
This picture was published in Scale Models International, April 1994.
Author was Malcolm Hopper, on the subject "The Cobra's Bite!"
Photo by Malcolm Hopper.

Wow, I missed an entire thread on the Cobra. Shows you where my mind has been lately!
Cool paint scheme, Johan!

You can make out the tail end of the Huey to the left.

The photo that Johan posted looks as if the tailboom came from another aircraft, painted in the grey scheme instead of the tan camouflage.

FITTER

Picture looks like it was taken at Camp Pendleton Ca probably sometime after the Spring of 91 - obviously sometime after HMLA-367 returned from Desert Storm (Apr 91). 160800 is the correct serial number for 121. She was tri-color then painted gray in Aug of 90 and deployed to Desert Shield gray and was repainted sand and brown prior to Desert Storm. The aircraft stayed sand and brown after 367 got back to the States until the paint washed off (it was latex) or they could be repainted in the newer gray. As mentioned above, this scheme is probably the unintentional by-product of a tailboom swap - I don't think it stayed this color for very long.

, thx Supercobra!
I found an old kit in the "before kid number 2" box, its 1:48 and I think its Monogram or Italeri.
Have lost the instruction sheet, decal set and a few parts that now need to be scratched... found the StuGIII instruction sheet though
Very good reference pics, I'll try to depict the colour pattern.

Please let me know if there are Tamiya eqvivalents to the sand/brown/grey

Hi all

Sorry to jump in so late but I have a question for supercobra.

supercobra, the pic u posted for HMM-166, do u by any chance know what the colours are in that scheme?

I am going to use Tamiya Acrylics.
XF-55 Deck Tan
XF-52 Flat Earth
XF-20 Medium Grey (bit light though)

Actually the Navy has some Cobra's at NAS China Lake in California. I believe they are part of VX-9, the test and eval squadron.

If you read up higher in the thread, USN test squadrons have been IDed as having USMC Cobras with USMC markings on them attached to the test squadrons. These are not Navy Cobras, just USMC Cobras attached to Navy squadrons. US Navy does not operate any Cobras as part of their own organizations.

QUOTE: Originally posted by osjohnm Hi all Sorry to jump in so late but I have a question for supercobra. supercobra, the pic u posted for HMM-166, do u by any chance know what the colours are in that scheme?

The gray color is simply the old tri-color camo gray that was painted over. I'm guessing because I haven't looked it up recently but I think that color was FS35237. I don't know if there is a close FS match for the sand color. It was a brown latex house paint with wihte painted added. Same for the sand/brown Desert Storm scheme. As soon as they got the aircraft got Stateside and washed regularly more and more of the underlaying paint schemed appeared.