No interior green in B-17's you say??? Be prepared to be wrong!

[Juggernut]

 

As I was....  Apparently, Douglas built B-17G's (at least the G's) had the waist gun area of the fuselage (bulkhead 6 to bulkhead 9 I think) painted interior green (Boeing and Vega did not).  There are a couple of photos (first two photos in post #21) which show this beyond any doubt.  Below is a link to a conversation that I'm involved in (as painted interior's were a revelation to me) that contains the photos:

 

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/hyperscale/airfix-b-17-t506451-s20.html

 

I didn't paste the photo's here (yet) as I didn't want to usurp etiquette and just use them without asking (not knowing whether these were owned by the thread participants or not).  I have not yet received a response so until then, the above link will have to suffice.

 

In lieu of posting those particular photographs, I have found some others on the web of the same aircraft. 

 

 

 

 

In the last image, you can see bare metal aft of the fuselage former visible in the open crew access door.  The metal immediately in front of the former has been painted.  Notice the chipped paint on the left side formers aft of the hole in the fuselage.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Juggernut
calrifyed photo references

[b757captain]

Holy, mother of . . . .!!!!! That is one tough airplane!

 

Sorry, you said something about paint?

 

[Karl H]

Sorry I didn't get back to you. What I found interesting about these photos is that it appears the paint in the waist was added after equipment was installed. It looks like it goes around the ammo boxes, fuse box and other items. There are a number of photos of this particular incident out there. There are a few other photos which seem to show painted waists, some of which can be confirmed as Douglas. But others cannot. So was it something done locally? A gentleman who worked at the Douglas Long Beach factory swears they did not paint the interior. To help confuse the issue, a number of the surviving B-17's are Douglas built and some folks again swear that the airplanes came that way. But several of them were Navy/Coast Guard airplanes which would have been painted. It has been a frustrating subject and I really do not know the real answer. I don't think anyone has the absolute answer. I do think that any interior paint was not the "interior green" that is sold by model paint manufacturers. It was more likely tinted chromate like North American so widely used.

Edited June 27, 2019 by Karl H

[Juggernut]

4 hours ago, Karl H said:

Sorry I didn't get back to you. What I found interesting about these photos is that it appears the paint in the waist was added after equipment was installed. It looks like it goes around the ammo boxes, fuse box and other items. There are a number of photos of this particular incident out there. There are a few other photos which seem to show painted waists, some of which can be confirmed as Douglas. But others cannot. So was it something done locally? A gentleman who worked at the Douglas Long Beach factory swears they did not paint the interior. To help confuse the issue, a number of the surviving B-17's are Douglas built and some folks again swear that the airplanes came that way. But several of them were Navy/Coast Guard airplanes which would have been painted. It has been a frustrating subject and I really do not know the real answer. I don't think anyone has the absolute answer. I do think that any interior paint was not the "interior green" that is sold by model paint manufacturers. It was more likely tinted chromate like North American so widely used.

 

Hi Karl,

 

No worries about the reply.  I was wondering if local paint jobs might have been a possibility and in the other thread, I posed a question to Lynn about one of the photos in that thread, the -35-DL with an open crew access door at the back, seemingly being natural metal on the interior.  That led me to ask him if the process might have been discontinued by the -35-DL production run.  From the photos above, it doesn't look like the paint went that far back to include said door so production block might not even be a factor.  I have not seen any further activity in that thread since then. Lynn mentioned 34151 but he was probably referring to the tinted zinc color (yellow zinc +black) that you mentioned. It is interesting and once again, we discover there are precious few absolutes in this line of work (aka hobby).

 

I think I can see what you're talking about with respect  to painting around equipment.  In the second photo above, the area that I think would have been occupied by armor plate seems to be natural metal.  Or is that an ammo can "box" outline?  For the life of me though, I cannot remember if the waist gun stations had armor plating above the gunner or not... Damn, getting old really sucks.

Edited June 27, 2019 by Juggernut