P-12E in 27th Pursuit Squadron Colors

[Tnarg]

The old Hasegawa P-12E has a great option of the diving eagle insignia on a great big band across the side of the fuselage. Their instructions paint the fuselage band and nose red and the long (sometimes curved) wing chevrons insignia blue.

 

Air Force Colors has a photo of several of the squadron, but doesn't call out the colors.

 

An old IPMS Quarterly (Fall 1986) says the side band is red with black outlines and the top chevron is purple.

 

Aero Series on the Boeing P12 and F4B says the fuselage band is yellow, maybe yellow orange to match the wings, but doesn't comment on the wing chevron.

 

The Squadron P-12/F4B In Action book has a wonderful black and white photo of a P-12K in similar colors with skis and the polar bear emblem on the cowl plus two more nice photos including multiple chevron (command stripes) under the top wing. They call the fuselage stripe as yellow.

 

A page out of a reprint of an old Aeromodeler Dec 1964 has a drawing of the P-12E and calls the fuselage band orange-yellow as opposed to the chrome yellow called out for the wings.

 

The Monogram Aircraft Color Guide has a photo of the P-12k with the skis and polar bear but says insignia and markings "comply with specifications"... hard to sort out what they say about the fuselage band and the chevron.

 

So... my Dad was about 12 when this plane was photographed and he's not here to ask, nor are most of the people who saw it in 1933.

 

Don't want to open the "Lou" or Werner Voss' cowling color debate, as fun as they are, but does anyone have a clue or any reference that has something more than "That's just your opinion, man"?

 

"Enquiring minds want to know..."

 

Thanks for any help on this interesting question.

 

Tnarg

[RBrown]

I don't have an answer but here are some images...

 

 

 

[RBrown]

A couple more...

 

 

The last image shows that these aircraft were not always pristine.

[RBrown]

The December 1998 issue of Scale Aircraft Modeling had a sixteen page article on the F4B and P-12 with several pages of color profiles.  The article shows 27th Pursuit machines with the eagle on a red disk, fuselage band in yellow with black trim.   But the photos posted above show different tones for the yellow tail plane and the fuselage band.   Perhaps a different yellow, or ?

 

Article illustrates A/C 49 with red upper wing chevron.

[RBrown]

Don Greer's box art for Classic Airframes...

 

[RBrown]

Here two illustrations of 27th Pursuit A/C from the old Profile Publication on the P-12E...

 

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by RBrown

[Tnarg]

Thanks a lot for your images and ideas. These show some of the confusing ideas on the colors of the plane... but.... when I look at the various photos posted here and in other books, I see a slight difference between the fuselage band and the background of the diving eagle emblem of the 27th Pursuit Squadron, which was definitely red. The band is definitely not the same color as the wings. The band on the fuselage is not that different from the reds, but is a little bit lighter in many of them, which makes me want to go with that orange yellow color in the Monogram reference.

 

The color on the top of the wing is a tougher call, but the plane with multiple chevrons has a very dark tone in the top wing, much darker than the insignia red on the tail, but similar in dark level to the vertical insignia blue band on the tail, which almost looks black in the Monogram reference. The wing chevron color is darker than the olive drab fuselage (#22 or dark olive drab #31).

 

Definitely the chevron on top of the wing was not red nor purple nor olive drab. I could go with blue or black, and it appears that no one has actual records from personal memory and color photos were never there.

 

The Navy would have used True Blue for their section colors, but this was the Army and they probably did have paint cans full of Insignia Blue.

 

Thanks again,

 

Tnarg

 

Edit: I took another look at the top wing. The statements I made above are not correct.

 

The chevron is NOT the same color as the blue in the insignia that it crosses. The chevron appears much darker than the orange or the red of the fuselage side or the tail stripes (obviously). Looking at the black pin striping around the fuselage band and comparing with the olive drab fuselage, I could almost be persuaded that the chevron on top of the wing is olive drab... but possibly it was black.

 

I think I am back in the place where I started, without a good answer for the chevron color. Numbers in parenthesis are the reference colors from the Monogram book. I can state that it is not red (15) nor blue (probably still 24) nor orange (? number). It could be black (44) or olive drab (22). I don't know what a purple (32) would look like in that light and with that film, nor if they could have used that color at the time.

 

The photos clearly show that the side of the fuselage band does not match the yellow (4) of the wings nor the red (likely flag 15) of the insignia. Orange seems like a very good possibility, but I don't see anything in the Monogram reference that looks like it would make sense as an official color... unless they mixed yellow (4) and red (15)??? The only orange in the reference is International Orange (A-N) and that wasn't around in the early 1930's.

 

So... the answer to this question is... make up what I like that looks close. No one is likely to have a definite answer until we find a time machine and that will have a long list of other fun questions to answer before this one.

 

Thanks again to those who helped. This forum is great!

 

Tnarg

Edited May 6, 2022 by Tnarg
I was wrong, need to fix this.