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B-24 J Liberator interior colours


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Just starting to do some research on the B24-J  with the idea of starting a build later in the year. I've been looking at interior colours but am totally confused to be honest. I am planning on doing a NMF bird so would the Interior be the same with the main cockpit area being green. Also is the bimb bay green, zinc chromat or a grey colour. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Regards. Andy

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It’s not an easy answer, each plant had different methods at different times for different components. The one constant is that the crew opening areas were dull dark green, which was black mixed with zinc green. Some different mixing looked more like a dark forest green. This was generally in areas around crew windows, so from the nose to the navigator compartment. Them from the ball turret to just behind the side gunner windows, then the very back of the tail, around the rear turret.

 

Other areas in between were zinc in early aircraft, but later were left uncoated. This varied considerably. 

 

The bomb bay were initially neutral gray, but to me the color looked lighter. It’s hard to tell the difference between oxidized aluminum in an old aircraft and gray. I believe at some point, as the aircraft were unpainted, the bomb bays were also bare aluminum. 

 

Again, as these were build all over, and with parts from different plants, the colors varied between aircraft. An excellent book to see a 90% unrestored B-24 in color, is “The Soldier”.

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Sorry, I wish I had more definite answers, but the term "consolidated mess" was coined on this aircraft. I spent months researching this while building my B-24. I was not able to pin down anything exact, with over 15000 built at 5 different factories, and assembled from parts from different factories, there was no definite exact standard. And, as the factories were trying to reach maximum output, you will see that late aircraft often were uncoated and untreated, in trade for production speed. So, unless there is documented proof of a particular aircraft's colors, you can pretty much just pick a style and dare anyone to prove you wrong. 

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2 hours ago, 1to1scale said:

 So, unless there is documented proof of a particular aircraft's colors, you can pretty much just pick a style and dare anyone to prove you wrong. 

 

Now that I like, a little along the lines of building some ww1 subjects! 

 

Once again, thank you for you help on this one.

 

Regards. Andy 

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On 8/18/2019 at 2:21 PM, monthebiff said:

Just starting to do some research on the B24-J  with the idea of starting a build later in the year. I've been looking at interior colours but am totally confused to be honest. I am planning on doing a NMF bird so would the Interior be the same with the main cockpit area being green. Also is the bimb bay green, zinc chromat or a grey colour. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Regards. Andy

Andy,

 

Have you watched the recently posted Kermit Weeks videos in which he crawls through a very original B-24 for nearly an hour!? 

 

Check them out and have a look at the overall flavor inside the plane.

 

Heres' Part 1.  There is also a Part 2. 

 

 

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Thank you for that, watched the two parts a few times now and very interesting indeed, given me some great ideas and also answered a few questions I had. Only problem this has now caused is another build started, trying to work out what needs doing internally ......yes, yes I know it's all wrong  shapes etc and therefore unbuildable but I am looking forward to building this one after years drooling over the duxford airframe and now have one in 32nd scale as well as finding a really cool colour scheme along the way, so what's not to like!

 

Regards. Andy

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