SPA Modeler

Stuart- he’ll yeah they were! Yes indeed my friend!

Bruce- Nothing at all, save from Googling “salt weathering” and “Ole 123”, and reading that fantastic site Carlos directed me to, and talking to friends who had relatives who flew them.

My 2 cents on the weathering. Most airstrips in the South Pacific were made from crushed coral poured over a Martson matting base. The stuff in prop wash was very abrasive. So you’d see abrasion on highlights in the path of prop blast, plus gunk build up in the recesses, from the dust and hydraulic fluid leakage...

Here’s a look at the airfields

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=suOZtljSxQw&t=145s

Carlos, that video gives me a lot of inspiration. Thank you.

Here... Dana Bell’s replies, in particular, with Kodachrome images, are great:

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/ind ... y-colours/

The contrast! Shiny and... what you want!

The photos in that thread are amazing, thank you!

As to the discussion, their ideas about the wheel wells differ from what I’ve read. Which, that isn’t necessarily bad, since there may have been Chance Vought Corsairs out there with either Zinc Chromate wheel wells or white overspray in there. Dammit this is a head-scratcher, for sure LOL Anyway, these pics are awesome because they resemble the picture I had in my kind of how I wanted this model to look, so I know I’m on the right track there with the major details, which is good!

Insignia white looks so grey to me...



The variegated look of salmon and ZCY primers!

KennyX wrote:The photos in that thread are amazing, thank you!

As to the discussion, their ideas about the wheel wells differ from what I’ve read. Which, that isn’t necessarily bad, since there may have been Chance Vought Corsairs out there with either Zinc Chromate wheel wells or white overspray in there. Dammit this is a head-scratcher, for sure LOL Anyway, these pics are awesome because they resemble the picture I had in my kind of how I wanted this model to look, so I know I’m on the right track there with the major details, which is good!

As a general practice in WWII, the USN ( and by extension the USMC) painted the wheel wells on aircraft in the same color as the surrounding area.

Yes sir, there it is, just like Carlos said:

speedgraflex wrote:

And Bruce, thank you! This is exactly why I was thinking about in terms of the wheel well weathering, it’s pretty much how I’d pictured it in my head, except with the yellow Zinc Chromate underneath.:

It looks like that wing spar at the forward end of the wheel bay took most of the abuse from flung up debris. Which makes sense when you consider the motion dynamics as the aircraft is taking off.