P-40N Coral Camouflage

[bfwaechter]

Does anyone have an FS number for what has been referred to as "coral" color which some P-40N's were painted by the 45th FS of the 15th FG?  I will assume that this is highly subjective, but I'm hoping someone out there has tackled this problem in the past and could give me some guidance.  Thanks.

 

Boyd Waechter

Katy, TX.

IPMS #1282

[Dana Bell]

Hi Boyd,

 

There are still two schools of thought of the desert island camouflage.  The "pink" school would go for Corps of Engineers Desert Sand, slightly darker than 30279.  The "beige" school believes Corps of Engineers Sand, which was a bit lighter than 33448.  I opt for the beige, but I really can't prove I'm right...

 

Cheers,

 

 

Dana

[Oldbaldguy]

Anyone besides me remember Sue Parrish's glorious pink and light blue P-40 from back in the day?  Much was made of its pink paint job and some of the warbird know-it-alls liked to argue about whether the scheme was accurate or not, but she never claimed it was authentic.  She just liked pink.  And it was shiny.  I liked it; better than OD or beige or whatever.  Just sayin'.....

[Chek]

Legend is that Sue Parish's pink P-40N was a big hit with young girls and women back in the day and they appreciated her resistance to the John Wayne image male aviators had cultivated. You only have to look around at the number of front line female military and civilian pilots today to see that it would be churlish to deny any effect. And why wouldn't sharks wear lipstick? I bet they would if they could. Lady sharks at least. And in a certain light it looks kind of 'authentic'.

 

 

But I'm reminded of my friend Chris from many years ago. Chris was a sought after motor mechanic and very keen modeller and wasn't overly concerned with what we'd today call 'accuracy'. His view was ''this is an Airfix model Spitfire, that is a FROG model Spitfire and that's a Revell model Spitfire. Each was as good a model as he could make of what it was, as bought.

 

In the early autumn of 1990 just days after they'd flown out, he brought to the club an Airfix Jaguar finished in a lurid pink, which pre-internet and allowing two months delay for the aviation mags to catch up attracted much interest at the monthly club meeting. The shade of pink would have pleased the eye of a PVC dominatrix (or... so I'm told).

 

By the spring of 1991, the Gulf War RAF planes had mostly all come home and were appearing at the summer airshows, and the well weathered reality of ARTF pink could be seen in all it's ad-hoc patched sandy glory on Tornadoes, Buccaneers and Jaguars and looked very similar in the colour magazine photos. Chris was still proud of his lurid latex pink Jaguar he brought in at every opportunity though because 'that was how they looked on the tele (TV) 'when I first saw them'.

 

I can only surmise that the colour saturation on his CRT TV was turned up to 11, but so were lots of others too in those days. Why else have colour and not get the max value from it? Never mind the radiation burns. I still think of him and his healthy attitude when fretting over some minutiae.

Edited July 6, 2020 by Chek
photo added

[Shawn M]

she is still hanging in the entry way to the Air Zoo

 

[Dana Bell]

Sue Parish was a sweetee.  I first met her at the USAF Still Photo Depository in 1977.  She wore an airplane lapel pin - when I asked why she had a Citation on her jacket, she knew she had another airplane nut to talk with.  Later, discussing her pink Warhawk, she confessed that she knew the color was jazzed up a bit from the actual camouflage specs but (with a twinkle in her eye) she enjoyed torquing up some of the good ole boys at the air shows.  Hard to believe she's been gone a decade now...

 

Cheers,

 

 

Dana