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P-40 Aleutian Tigers in WWII COLOR!


anj4de

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Very cool. I'm still looking for the Canadian P-40s stationed on the islands. As an aside Adak is the only island I ever got to and it was beautiful in a rather stark way. All 4 seasons in an hour. The most interesting things to me were the slow down ramp, quansit huts as far as the eye could see and the strict rules about where to walk and where not. Quite a good TD. Wish I could have gone back.

James

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What search phrases did you use? I found some of those images, but none of the B-24s in flight. Those are fantastic!

 

Notes on the P-40s:

 

1. Note that almost all of them have a huge amount of paint stripping (not chipping) caused by the prop scouring them with the volcanic dust of Adak (and all other Aleutian islands). The stuff is literally like sandpaper. The back sides of the prop blades except the very bottom root end are sanded completely clean down to the bare metal.

 

2. Note the application of the red bordered white bars - never seen before to my knowledge. All previous profiles and decals have shown them with the 1942 type star in circle only.

 

3. Note the hand painted, rough edged, uneven, with visible brush strokes tiger faces. Nothing at all like the computer-smooth stuff of decals. Very sloppily painted.

 

4. Lots of the P-40s have yellow zinc chromate gear struts! Not sure if the silver paint has been eroded away, but one would think if it eroded away down to bare metal on the prop, wings, and fuselage inside the prop arc, it would also have worn the gear struts down to bare steel. Leads me to think the struts were intentionally painted and/or left in YZC.

 

Interesting stuff there...

 

J

 

Hi again

 

The search string is: Aleutian Islands (S.A. B257) source:life there are more plane photos on there

 

Searching the LIFE pictures is a bit of a pain since there are no common search criteria. Also each search will only bring a max of 10 pages of pictures, so if you search for a photographers name and he has 10000 pics there you will not see all of them

 

This pictures were taken in 1943 while all the other bw ones I found were taken earlier, in 1942, when the film "Report from the Aleutians" was made by John Huston.

The weathering on those P-40s is really remarkable, one could use the salt method that was so far only deemed suitable for Japanese plane models...to bad mine is already in overall olive. When you watch the movie it becomes clear that is was most likely only a matter of days after arrival until the paint was gone. Those take off scenes through a foot of water mixed with sand on the "runway" that wasn't even that but only PSPs welded together explains it all, just like sanding under water!

On the gear struts, is this really zinc chromate or just yellow? And the wheel hub covers, are they yellow or also zinc?

 

If anybody finds more of those pics please post them here as well!

 

cheers

Uwe

 

PS. Have you seen those beautiful pre war full color Douglas Devastator pics on google...go to http://images.google.com/images?q=1940s+Hawaii+source:life

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Hi

 

There is a whole lot more of those Dauntless pictures there, I found 15 of them, all large scale, brilliant color and from the same flight...I just can't remember how I found them!

 

cheers

Uwe

 

PS: What bugs me now...shall I build a 1942 Tiger or one from 43? The red surrounded stars and bars I have from the P-40K kit...difficult decision. By the way, since the planes are obviously still the same as 42, did they still have the US Army under the wing, what do you think? There is a P-40K war bird around today that has the 43 style insignia with the US Army, I wonder where they had the info from?

 

PPS: By looking closer at the pics I was able to confirm the US Army under wing even though rather faded.

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