B-25J interior colours

[cairnsy]

G’Day All,

 

I recently picked up the HK B-25J Glass nose with the intent of building a RAAF B-25J during the Pacific campaign I have my eye on A47-29 with the shark mouth on an OD over Neutral grey scheme. I am very excited to make a start on it but deciphering reference is proving a little difficult. I am curious about the interior colours of these aircraft noting that I believe the J models we had were attrition replacements for our D models and therefore US hand me downs so I assume the colouring would be as seen on US examples. 
 

I am chasing the appropriate colours for the interior in particular the interior green for the cockpit and aft fuselage. There are always so many options with regard to “interior green” and it seems to depend on manufacturer and country of origin so keen to hear from anybody in the know about North American’s green of choice. 
 

I am also interested in the bomb bay colour I have seen various greens including the chromate looking green, a much darker green and silver.

 

And finally I believe the nose compartment for the Bombardier was a darker green than the rest of the interior (but maybe the same darker green as the bomb bay?)  

 

I have had a good perusal of google but I note that many of the photos I see are restored and warbird aircraft so sometimes they are not necessarily the best reference with regard to colouring and schemes so if anybody knows the wartime colours I would love to hear from you. I will likely be trying to use the new range of SMS lacquer paints or possibly old faithful Gunze/Tamiya acrylics.

 

thanks very much in advance

 

cheers

 

Cairnsy

 

 

[Lee_K]

Here's a post made to rec.models.scale (anyone remember that?) by John Clements:

 

I'm consulting the B-25J E&M manual AN 01-60GE-2 with the revision dated 5 August 1944. In a nutshell, here's the Reader's Digest version of what it says:

Flight deck and glare shield are Dull Dark Green
Everything aft of the flight deck is yellow-green/Interior Green
Bombardiers station is yellow-green/Interior Green
Bomb bay, engine nacelles, and wheel wells receive no finish coat
Instrument panel is flat black
 

- John Clements
 

When I built my B-25Js (in various scales), I used the above as a guide.  Note that B-25 production lasted the entire war and earlier B/C/D/G models used Bronze Green in the cockpit rather than Dull Dark Green and that one often saw Neutral Gray used in the bomb bay.  For the J model, the bomb bay was left unpainted.  Also note that despite the "everything aft of the flight deck is Interior Green", that does not apply to the rear section of the fuselage aft of the bomb bay, which was also unpainted aluminum.  North American Aviation was interested in getting compensation from the Army to get as many B-25s out into the field as quickly as possible so the less painting they had to do with their bombers, the faster the bombers could leave the line.  This is one of the main motivations for US aircraft dispensing with any camouflage whatsoever from 1944 on.

 

Interior Green was a formula, not a specific paint.  It involved Yellow Zinc Chromate primer tinted with lamp black, which makes the color turn green.  FS34151 is generally regarded as the color most closely resembling the mix although there was a lot of variation throughout the war depending on the factory and how the paint was mixed that day.

 

Lastly, warbirds are a terrible reference for interior colors.  They have another issue to deal with and that is long-term protection of the aluminum, so they tend to paint everything the same color which often means some kind of loose match with Interior Green.  Very, very rarely do we see the proper colors researched and then restored.

 

[Ol' Scrapiron]

Here is the info I had found online regarding the B-25 interior colors.

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I started out with the colors from this chart, but strayed a little in some areas.

 

Hope that helps.