Aaron
The USCG had a variety of paint schemes for their fixed and rotary wing aircraft during the 1950's and 1960's. The reason(s) for the different paint schemes was: the desire to standardize a "Service ID paint scheme" different from the other armed services; the attempt to experiment and create high visability paint schemes; and the need to make the paint maintenance simple for the ground crews. As for helo paint schemes of the 1950's...in the post WWII period the helos were painted silver dope over all with some yellow safety markings, usually at the rear rotor. Some helos were equipped with floats and these were painted silver. In 1953 the CG painted it's helos a orange yellow over all with black lettering, but some were still left in the siver paint. In the late 50's-early 1960's the CG began painting the helicopters gloss white with red orange(almost day-glo orange) markings on the nose and tail. Around 1962 the helo's were painted gloss white but a gloss red orange(vermillion) and in the shape of an arrow on the nose. This became the standard color for helos but when the Coast Guard left the Treasury department to become part of the Transportation department(1967) the familiar CG "Slash" became part of ships, stations, vehicles, and aircraft. In painting USCG aircraft, 1967 is the deviding line for paint schemes, please keep that in mind. There were a few examples of the helos(and aircraft) painted gloss white with chrome yellow markings instead of day-glo orange markings. Keep in mind these were "one-offs" used to judge the effectiveness of hi-viz paint by ground observers. And some of the helos in the white scheme didn't have the black stripe border around the red orange paint that made it seperate from the white.
I recall watching the movie "Niagara" (starring Marylon Monroe) and a USCG HO4S-2G, painted yellow overall, appears in the film rescuing a person about to go over the falls.
Starting in the early 1980's the CG began to paint their copters red orange for ice breaker deployment, it's a lot easier to spot a helo in all that white snow and ice! The "Dolphin" helo was originally painted in gloss white with CG red trim but in the early 1990's they were painted the current gloss red orange we see today. Another thing to keep in mind is that the Service experimented with different "red orange" paint tones in the 60's. Also the color film and the type of lighting effected the color of the photos of the helos in that time period.
The red on the HH-60 Jayhawk appears more "red" than the "red orange" on the HH-65A Dolphins, I'm not sure if the paint code is the same. Perhaps the white on the HH-60 gives the illusion the "red" is redder.
For furthur info try uscgaviationhistory.aoptero.org/history02.html also Google the USCG home page, scroll down to the CG historian's page and check out the color photos of the HO4S-2g, as well as other CG aircraft. Good luck in your project.
Regards
Mike Maynard(USCG RET.)