I am doing the Trumpeter 1/48 Wellington 1C for the BBB campaign and have struck a little hitch - the interior colour. I understand that the cockpit area was black and the bomb bay aluminium but the rest of the interior is what I am after.

After 5 hours on the internut I am none the wiser. I have found 2 interior photos from a restored aircraft in a museum somewhere - they are not the best quality but seem to be a greenish colour. Tom Cleaver (from Modelling Madness) believes that the interior is a brick red being the colour of the dope used for the fabric. I have searched aeroscale and the only hit I have is Rowan's in box review in 2006.

Anyone got any better information? I am inclined to lean towards Mr Cleaver's view as it is logical and restorations are notorius for inaccuracy with colours.

All help will be gratefully received.

Brian

Hi!

I will go with a reddish-brown dope color and silver (aluminium) framework on mine, when I build it.
Can´t say how correct this is, but from what i have seen or read, it´s NOT green!
TC can be a bit harsh sometimes, but I do trust his assumptions on colors and I do like (and trust) his kit-reviews!
He´s usually spot-on, and he tells us the ugly truth!

Cockpit color is as you say, black.

I can recommend the excellent 4+ -Book, a very good reference on the Whimpey!

Cheers!

Stefan E

MPM's mk.II kit and it's instruction sheet has list of colours for the interior components.

I have a feeling they [i]might[/url] have used the 4+ book for references, since they recommend it for further reading.

Stefan and Eetu

Thanks for your quick responses. Red is the way I will go. That 4+ book looks interesting I might try and chase up a copy.

Anyway after missing a night of gluing/painting doing "research" I will head off to paint now.

Brian

Remember that the dope was applied to the outside of the fabric, not the interior; this means that the interior was a streaky pink/cream colour, where the thinned first coat(s) soaked through, not brick red.
Edgar

Brian,

The cockpit area is black, model Master make the Interior Black and the remainder is the Redish primmer colour. I attached 2 pix of the 72 scale Mk I I built for a friend.

Hope thay help a little.

Edgar & Rob

Thanks for your replies. I realize that a brick type red may not be totally accurate - and a streaky lighter red/pink may be a truer colour BUT I will call it artistic licence. The reality is that when I looked around the only red I had other than scarlet was Tamiya's spray can of dull red and that is what I used. I think in some respects it may make it a bit easier to see the interior detail - well fingers crossed on that one.

Rob - ball park mine now looks like an enlarged version of your pics. I have also used the Aircraft Interior Black. I should have a couple of photos up in the BBB campaign page in a couple of days if you are interested.

Brian

I know it's a bit late, but I remember an interview with an early pilot who was very impressed with the green Connolly hide seats.

Too late now but the way to do it would be to paint it a cream colour and then dry-brush with a brick red colour. The metal structure was not painted. You might try using a flexible straight edge and a silver pencil to draw that on afterwards. Never tried it so cannot say wether it will work. During WWII seats in British aircraft were covered with a ubiquitous green material. Humbrol 88 Deck Green is a good match.

There are some veterans that are adamant the interior was green, presumably Grey Green. Perhaps some later Wellingtons were. Most the equipment was installed before covering with fabric. So, if the interior was painted the job must have been horrendous in that confined space. Also it would add a lot of extra weight.