Guys & Gals,

I thought I recently saw a post about what colors USA used for aircraft interiors.

Thumbing through Library of Congress FSA-OWI Color Photos I gleened these aircraft photos(all photos Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF35-1326]):

An A-20 bomber being riveted by a woman worker at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant at Long Beach, Calif.

Inside an A-20


B-25 wing spar interior


2 ZINC CHROMATES


"Riveters at work on fuselage of Liberator bomber ... ."


"This [is] one of the numerous assembly operations in connection with the mass production of Vultee "Vengeance" dive bombers."


"Making wiring assemblies at a junction box on the fire wall for the right engine of a B-25 bomber, North American Aviation, Inc., [Inglewood], Calif."


"The "Vengeance" (A-31) was originally designed for the French. It was later adopted by the R.A.F. and still later by the U.S. Army Air Forces. It is a single-engine, low-wing plane, carrying a crew of two men and having six machine guns of varying calibers."

Thanks Fred. Very good and interesting pics.
That yellowish colour (last picture) in the ribs of what seems it will be a wing, is named chromate yellow ?

Interesting photos Fred, thanks for not only finding them, but taking the time to post them.

Hi Carlos,

Yes, it is zinc chromate yellow. A very good description of the zinc chromates are here: Interior Colours of US Aircraft, 1941-45
Part I

Looking through this page, I see that I have found and used many of the same photos Mr. Waligorski used. Useful all the same.

Hey JPTRR, I couldn't get your link to work.
Do you have any ideas on how many different kinds of planes left the line with the zinc chromate yellow instead of the interrior green? Would it have depended on which factory the plane was made or were different paints used for different planes, i.e. green for fighters and yellow on bombers?
Just curious, thanks.
Hermon

Hi Hermon,

Basically, zinc chromate yellow was the primer used in/on all components that were not for human occupancy.

Zinc chromate green is zinc chromate yellow with the green tint added, and is used as "interior green", but not quite. Also used in non-crew areas.

The "interior green" for crew areas varied, but was a light green, an apple green.

Bell used their own in the cockpit of the P-39.

North American used 'Dull Dark Green' insuide the cockpit of P-51.

Consolidation used 'Bronze Green' in the cockpit of B-24.

Republic used a dark green inside P-47, though P-47 built by Curtiss had a more common nterior green.

Here are some of my pix posted at the site's Photos:

B-24

B-26

B-25

Hermon,

I'm working from memory here, so don't take this as gospel, but somewhere in my references I have an article about this and it runs something like this:

Zinc Chromate was actually translucent and colourless after manufacture. In order to aid application, a yellow pigment was added. This resulted in a slightly translucent yellow appearance. This was used as-is for all non-crewed areas. Black pigment was added for application to crewed areas. This gave a green colour with less translucency (don't know why adding black gave green). Neither of these colours were controlled by any standard or even guidelines, so they would vary considerably.
Some aircraft manufacturers used different colours at times (I seem to remeber something about Vought using a reddy colour for uncrewed areas for a while?)

Hope this helps!

Steve

EDIT Whoops, Fred beat me to it and with better info. Have to type faster next time

Steve... if you mix yellow with black you get Olive Drab....
so depending on the amount of black added, the end result- some shade of green will show up. Adding a third color will change that green.

Not posted to start the old Olive Drab Debate...... !!!!!
Just simple color theory!

Hi Steve,

I may have beat you, but you were more thourough with the Vought "Salmon" color used in F4Us! Well done.




Hi Dave,

What old debate???

The old debate that I'm sure could fill GB's of harddisks on the net about the actual color or the color Olive Drab....

The funny thing is the discussions usually end by, use whatever you like....

Dave, that was my gut feeling (i.e. the end result wouldn't be quite as 'green' as interior green appears to be), but it was definitely what the original article said, it really stuck in my mind. The thing is, having worked in the paint industry, I can say that many 'Black' paints do contain quite a lot of other pigments, including blues (often used to increase the hiding power of the paint), so I suppose it's possible that the pigment used, (whatever it was!) could have made the end result greener that one might suppose. Just an idea...





Thanks Fred! 'Salmon', that was the word I was looking for..well, my excuse is that it was first thing in the morning here when I typed the post
:-)

Later, all

I will not say anthing about "Pink"...... :-) :-)

Guys -

Back in the 60's I worked in the fuselage design group at the LTV plant in Grand Prairie, Texas. I had many occasions to visit the assembly line and the mock up and got to investigate a wrecked A-7 Corsair II that had been returned to the plant for use as a static test AC.

I don't remember anything yellow but I can state that there were several different shades of primer and there was no ryme or reason to its application. Many of the parts were from subcontractors and many groups of parts would vary considerably although manufactured under exactly the same conditions.

Of course, that was not WW 2, but I have never worried about an "exact" or "standard" shade of Zinc Chromate cause I don't think anything of the sort exists. All were flat, and varied from a light grey-green, thru green, to a dark Forest green similiar to, although darker than a US Army uniform.

Many parts, the larger ones, were also spot painted with the range mentioned above.

Just my 2 cents.