paint/color scheme for a F6F-5 Hellcat?

This is a good site:

http://wp.scn.ru/

Fred,  Late war F6F-5 Hellcats were mostly overall Gloss Dark Sea Blue.

Regards,  Rick

Rick, thanks for the confirm on the color

Mucker, that's an awesome site and will definitely come in handy.  Thanks!

-Fred

well actually you had the Dark Sea Blue and white color scheme then the overall Dark seablue and the night fighter F6F-5 was overall non reflective black .

The F6F-3 was Medium blue Light Blue and Gray.

But I think there was a overall light sea gray -5 in the Atlantic area of operation or at least a color that looked like light sea gray.

Mikeym_us wrote:

well actually you had the Dark Sea Blue and white color scheme then the overall Dark seablue and the night fighter F6F-5 was overall non reflective black . The F6F-3 was Medium blue Light Blue and Gray. But I think there was a overall light sea gray -5 in the Atlantic area of operation or at least a color that looked like light sea gray.

Thanks for the extra confusion, Mike

I just ordered the walk around book from squadron/signal to get a better idea of which version I want to tackle.  Unfortunately, Hasegawa gives you 3 decal sets to choose from and I'm not really interested in any of them.

They give you the minsi III set, which is kind of a visually boring bird being that she's all clean and shiny.  Then they give you two non-descript early war birds.  I like the look of the late war deep sea blue, but I want to make a bird that looks like it did on the deck, not 60+ years later after a resto job.

I'm so confused...

-Fred

Great Models shows 6 sets of decals in 1/32.  I imagine Squadron or some of the other on-line shops have them also.  Unfortunately,  Hellcats are fairly drab.  The decal sets are all for an overall sea blue or sea blue, intermediate blue, white.  One set has the VF-27 cat mouth markings.  They were used on both the -3 and -5.  The easiest way to add color and interest is to do a sea blue machine and find some interesting g markings, the late war carrier identification.

This is the 1/48 Otaki, but gives you an idea of the VF-27 markings.

The Navy essentially had 4 paint schemes during the war.  Early in the war was medium blue on top and a very light gray below. 

Mid-war, starting at the same time the star with bar with the red surround was adopted, the Pacific and Atlantic adopted different schemes.  The Pacific aircraft had three tone, dark blue, medium blue, and white in the bottom.  The exact pattern of these colors varied from one plane to the next.  In the Atlantic, it was gray-blue upper and white below. 

 In mid-1944, they adopted the all over glossy dark blue.  The night fighters carried this scheme before then, but it was adopted fleet wide.  It took a while for all aircraft to change schemes.  Some were still in tri-color in early 1945.

 The F6F-5 was introduced just after the color change was, so virtually all of them were over all glossy dark blue.

 Note, I didn't use the official names for the colors.  I'm too lazy to look them up.

Bill 

Mikeym_us wrote:

I think a war weary -5 would need a paint job to simulate a faded dark sea gray.

The Navy never let the paint deteriorate that much.  By mid-1944, repair depots were set up to refurbish combat aircraft after relatively short service.  I believe it was around 100 hours.

 The Royal Navy planes ended up looking much grungier.  I read in one of the Osprey books about an FAA Corsair pilot who had to fly ashore where the USN had a depot and he was amazed  to see the sea of shiney refurbished Corsairs.  He was shocked to learn that the Corsair he was flying had been in service something like 3 times longer thn any Navy Corsair.

 He got permission from the depot commander to swap out his broken down Corsair for a new one, but figured the admirl would notice if he returned in a Corsair with different camo and a different national insignia.

About the only realistic weathering  you can do on a late war USN Hellcat is exhaust stains and oil stains.  Otherwise, the birds were kept in very good condition.

 Bill

I'll jump in late here with a little more clarification. The USN's aircraft paint scheme in the first year of the war was Blue-gray over Light Gray (this was the same Light Gray that was in use prewar). The three-color scheme followed, being Semi-gloss Sea Blue, Intermediate Blue, and Non-specular White. The overall Glossy Sea Blue scheme followed in the late war period. In the Atlantic, the colors used were Dark Gull Gray and Non-specular White.

For your interest, we have all these available, accurately matched, in our Colourcoats line of enamels.

Cheers,

John Snyder, White Ensign Models, http://WhiteEnsignModels.com