eBay: North American P-51 Mustang

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Nice shot, but I think that "legally" that is an F-6A, the photo recon version of the P-51A. There were some in the U.K., although it was more well known in the Med. Some of the F-6A's there were used to help check out new P-51B pilots when then transitioned from the P-47D.
 
Re Post #479.
The correct colours are OD and RAF Dark Green. The blue came about in the early 1960s, when modellers and enthusiasts based the colours on a poor reproduction of an original colour transparency, which had a strong blue cast, as well as some erroneous information published in various books. This transferred to some actual preserved aircraft, and is sometimes still seen on models today !
 
fubar57 said:
North American F-6 Mustang

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Resp:
Look at the L front windshield panel . . . notice the insert panel that can be opened in flight. Only the P-51A/F-6B had these insert panels.
Correction:
In reviewing many wartime b/w photos, I found that many A-36As that also have the insert panel in the L front windshield panel. I have also found one very clear L profile photo of an A-36A without the insert panel. The question posed is 'were these panels' standard, added late on the production line (at one point shared the production line with P-51As) or a panel taken from an earlier F-6A Mustang in theater as a 'parts donor?' F-6As shared fields in the Med with A-36As, so spare parts were routinely cannibalized to keep others operational.
 
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Resp:
I read somewhere that the early USAAC P-40B/C had U.S. ARMY in 'blue' (wing underside) rather than in black. Could this also be incorrect?
 
Resp:
For some rare P-51 photos of almost all variants that went into service, google: swissmustangs.ch
 
fubar57 said:
North American F-6 Mustang

Click to expand...
Fubar, besides the cameras being added what were the other configuration differences with a stock P-51 fighter? Did they remove the guns or any other equipment to lighten the aircraft? Or, were there any changes to the engine?
Thanks again for the information. I never knew! I would've thought that WWII pilots and historians would've made the correction a long time ago. Strange to see American Beauty flying around with that color scheme. But, I have to admit it looks very good.
 
Biggest difference between the A-36A and P-51A was the engine. The A-36A was powered by a V-1710-87 engine rated at 1323hp at 3000 ft. It had its best top speed at about 5000 ft. The P-51A was powered by the V-1710-81 engine rated at 1200 hp but at a higher altitude, giving the best speed at about 20,000 ft, and which was about 50 mph faster than the A-36A. The P-51A also had bomb/drop tank racks on the wings.

The A-36A had six .50 cal guns, two in the bottom of the engine cowling and four in the wings. The P-51A had just the four guns in the wings.

Both were built with the same radios,SCR-274-N installations, HF sets rather than VHF and apparently retained those through their careers. The HF sets were found to be much better for communicating with the ground troops, an advantage the P-51A and A-36A had over the RAF for fighting in Burma. The RAF and the majority of the USAAF at that time did not think there was any reason for airplanes to talk to ground troops, but that capability was essential for the operations the Air Commandos did in support of the Chindits. Eventually everyone else figured that out as well.

The P-51A was short lived on the production line, only 310 built, all in the space of one month, March 1943. By that time the data on the Merlin engine installation had been collected and everyone knew that was the future of the airplane.
 


Actually, the argument began in the 1960s when members of the 361st began to refute evidence that their aircraft had been overpainted in blue. Until that time, all evidence was based on the observations of spotters (who had been invited on base to see the aircraft close-up) and published photos. Their diaries included sketches and notes about the blue paint over the uppersurface invasion stripes. Twenty years later, those who didn't remember the blue began to object to the evidence that was showing up in books and magazine articles. The surviving original image clearly shows blue and green.

Cheers,



Dana
 
Yes, I should have been more specific. The 'argument' began in the 1960s, when information started to appear in various books, some of which was based on observations by (then) young aircraft enthusiasts /spotters, who had seen the aircraft at the time, including, I believe, the late Roger Freeman.
From this info, it would seem that some aircraft did indeed display at least some blue areas, and certainly fin and wing tips were recorded as blue, as seen on "Tikka IV".
Back in the very early 1980s (1981 I think), I was partially involved in some photo interpretation of the "Bottisham Four" image, when an aviation magazine had asked us at Kodak Ltd in the UK, if we could determine the original colours from a 4 x 5 transparency which, from memory, was a high quality duplicate. Although I was only involved on the 'fringe' of this analysis, I recall that the results suggested that there were two shades of green, with any perceived blue cast being the results of annomalous reflection, where the film emulsion fails to record the colour(s) as seen by the human eye, but detects and records the actual base pigment(s), something quite common in, for example, wedding photography, were the groom's suit may appear blusih / purple, rather than black.
Not long after this, I remember reading, somewhere, that the USAAF at this time did, indeed, use RAF Dark green as a 'supplementary' camouflage paint, apparently due to a shortage of US OD.
Now regardless of all this, there is evidence to suggest that, at some point, a shade of blue was used, presumably due to lack of other suitable shades, to 'tone down' or cover areas, such as AEAF 'stripes, especially if these aircraft were to be on the ground on the European continent at some point.
However, the shade of blue used would appear to have been darker than that used by modellers, which is a much 'brighter', lighter shade and, at one time, was even called out specifically as a Humbrol colour - Railway Blue, which is not a close match to any of the shades that have appeared in colour images.
 
Hi Airframes,

Our stories seem to parallel each other in many ways. In 1981 I was working my last year at the USAF Still Photo Depository, just south of the Pentagon. We held the Air Force's historical photos, as well as the collections documenting then-current operations. Before year's end, I pulled all the remaining color shots of the 361st to see if I could visually detect blue or green paint on any of the aircraft. Many of the originals were long gone, with only dupes and internegs remaining - the Depository policy had been to loan the originals to the Pentagon for special projects, but those originals often weren't returned. The policy had changed, but there was still no way to get the originals back.

Using only a lupe and a daylight-balanced light table I could see two "colors" - the green that was on most aircraft, and a dark grayish tone seen on others. There was no sign of any blue in the images. I believed that the darker color could be some sort of blue, but there was still no visual proof. Still, neither the spotters nor the veterans ever mentioned seeing two different colors on their aircraft, which made me suspect both their points of view.

I moved on to the Smithsonian, and the collection moved to the Defense Audiovisual Agency (DAVA). DAVA planned to retire everything up to 1954 to the US National Archives, but the USAF History Office needed to keep the collection where they would have access for series of WWII books then in the works. The result was that the Air Force temporarily transferred the collection to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, where I had the opportunity to rebuild it. I noticed that a few more originals had left the collection, possibly lost when sent to contractors for reproduction, or perhaps misfiled when returned to the stacks. I took another look during my NASM years, but still couldn't see any sign of blue with a simple lupe and lightbox. With the Air Force History projects complete, the collection moved again to its final home at the National Archives. (The collection is identified as Record Group 342-FH, with the FH for "finally here!"

In 2018 I was scanning the remaining 361st images for a book I was writing on Olive Drab and Neutral Gray camouflage; I planned to write a caption noting that most of the aircraft wore green, but some aircraft wore an unidentified darker color. By that time, there was only one original left in the collection, with several dupes and internegs. Initially, the scans gave no indication of a blue camouflage, but when I lightened the scan of the last original slightly, the strong royal blue jumped out. (There was no sign of this blue in any of the duplicates.)

Today I feel the blue was only used to paint out the invasion stripes on the earlier aircraft - and that was what the spotters saw. After that encounter, newer aircraft were overpainted with green, and some of the surviving older aircraft had green added to outer wing panels and tails. This would explain the spotters making no mention of green - just the blue that they all saw. Eventually, all the older aircraft left the 361st, replaced by newer P-51s which, if camouflaged, used only green - and this would explain why the vets didn't remember any blue. Anyway, that's my speculative explanation of the widely differing observations.

Cheers,



Dana
 
Resp:
The P-51A also had a larger diameter propeller than previous variants.
 
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