Been getting humbled doing a 1/48 AMT P-40N - kit's excellent, but some driver error and some really poor aftermarket decals have me repainting a good portion of it. I have a lot of P-40 material - in California. I'm in Minnesota. Both the AMT instructions and the aftermarket decals call for medium green scallops applied on the upper surfaces over olive drab. My sole resource here does mention that 5th AF gave it's P-40 squadrons a distinctive white tail with an olive drab stripe for ID numbers, but says nothing about medium green. According to AMT the P40N came with the medium green scallops from the factory. I recall that Robert Archer pretty much says "face the music - unless they flew in the desert all USAAF combat planes were olive drab and neutral gray." (Interestingly none of my sources calls for a white leading edge on the wing which I've seen on some color plates. Perhaps that was a 1944 directive or artistic license. There are enough 49th FG photos online to lead me to believe they weren't there in 1943 when the P-40s were still doing the heavy lifting.)

Anyway, I have no interest in adding a major embellishment for art's sake, but if there should be medium green scallops over olive drab on the wings I'll apply them. Advice welcome.
Eric

While Many mid production P-40s did have the medium green edge blotches applied at the factory, I am fairly sure they discontinued that practice by the time the P-40N came along.

As for the white leading edge, that was a theater recognition marking for a certain area (new Guinea I think) and time, so it is possible, depending on when and where the aircraft was, tho it is clearly more common on commonwealth P-40s than American ones. here is a 5th AF P-40N that does not have that marking (i think profiles sometimes show this very aircraft with a white leading edge):


but then this one does appear to have some (well worn) white leading edges:


and here is a pic with two P-40s from the same squadron, one sporting the leading edge stripe, and one not (presumably the one without is new since the white leading edge mandate expired):


BTW, the olive drab tail stripe was more a way to not obscure the serial number more than it was a marking, sometimes it was a full stripe, sometimes it was a rectangle the size of the serial, other times they just painted white over the serial numbers.

Also, I think the white tails were also a theater marking rather than a 5th air force marking, but that really doesn't matter in your case

Since posting I've received some good info and found some more on my own. No green on a mid-43 P40N - that regulation was amended sometime in 1942. 5th AF which was taking anything it could get had a kind of zoo for a while: while flying out of Port Moresby several P40E had desert camo (no doubt redirected Lend Lease) some had a camo scheme with maybe 30% medium green over all horizontal surface. The white tail was a 5th AF directive in 1943. White stripes: it appears that a large numbers of their P47s carried it: the P40Ns were "sometimes" as your photo shows. What's striking when you get close-up photos of wartime New Guinea planes is how ragged the paint job is - looks like a lot of stuff was done by hand or with a crude stencil.

I'm trying to model an individual aircraft (Robert DeHaven's of 7th FS) and have two color plates of his plane without a leading edge - and a painting by artist Jack Fellows that shows edge very prominently. (That painting "Escape from Cape Moem" is the cover art for the paperback version of a book I wrote.) I know Jack worked closely with DeHaven on the painting (a print sits over my modeling desk)but wouldn't dismiss the possibility that he added them for artistic interest. Thanks to some bad decals and blunders I had to do some major repainting and decided to put the things on. All of the color plates of DeHaven's plane show the olive drab stripe across the tail as being quite thick and going end to end although I too seen rectangles. So we're just going to have to wing it. (Also saw a wonderful color print of a NMS P-40N flown by 5th AF HQ uber-ace Gerald Johnson in late 44. That would make a neat model.)
Eric