These colour photographs of FAA Corsairs clearly show the ANA 602 "light gray" applied as an undersurface paint colour instead of ANA 610 Sky. I know that it looks more like ANA 610 Sky, which was the required FAA finish for the Temperate Sea Scheme, but you need to "correct" the images using Photoshop until they appear as the correct "light gray" to conform to the hypothesis that "light gray" was applied instead of Sky.
Seriously though, even the third "corrected" image can't quite eliminate the evidence of Sky in favour of "light gray". In the top very high quality image note particularly the colours of the fuselage roundel.
ANA 610 Sky was retained in ANA Spec AN-1-9 Bulletins 157 and 166 until the end of the war, in fact re-affirmed in a Jan 19 1944 amendment that it would be accepted as standard, whilst ANA 602 was dropped at the same time.
(Really funny, but one of these images "corrected" to show "light gray" was recently posted on a well known forum as "proof" that FAA Corsairs were "light gray" underneath and not Sky. Surely the path is very long and very winding in that particular garden and many are being led up it!)
Image credits: From the internet and author's collection - un-"corrected".
last year I was having a 'discussion' with someone who insisted they were painted 'sky blue'.
ReplyDeletewhen I did a bit more digging I discovered that researchers 20 years ago found Vought's paint orders. and you know what ANA 610 is not on the list,only ANA 602.
(they needed large amounts of this color for the Kingfisher)
Paul, where did you dig, which researchers found Vought's paint orders and where are the paint orders now? We would all like to see these sources for ourselves rather than just take your word for it. This sounds suspiciously like the famous Curtiss paint contracts, cited as evidence for grey paint but so far not revealed.
ReplyDeleteit took ma while , but I found it.
ReplyDeletehttp://network54.com/Forum/149674/message/1233234306/Vought+Grey
Thanks Paul, I couldn't get the link to work, but I think you mean this post by Bruce Archer in a thread at Hyperscale about FAA Corsair colours:-
ReplyDelete"The title sky grey was used to drive the point home that Vought bought ANA602 (USN Non-Specular Light Grey)only for undersurface camo. They were buying the color for early USN Corsair, Kingfisher deliveries. Why buy other colorswhen you do not have to? It simplifies logistics. And the main supplier was DuPont.
When the companies purchase records were gone through (has it really been 20 years ago?)beides the primers and standard ( white , black, red) colors the ony camo colors found were :
Non-Specular Blue Grey (USN)
Non-Specular Light Grey, also known as ANA602 Light Grey (USN, FAA)
Non-Specular Sea Blue (USN)
Non-Specular Intermediate Blue (USN)
Non-Specular White (USN)
Glossy Sea Blue (USN)
US Sea Grey ANA603 (FAA)
Olive Drab ANA613(FAA)
The ANA #s can be found at:http://www.cybermodeler.com/color/ana_matrix.shtml
So what does this all mean? Vought used ANA602 as the underside color for FAA Corsairs."
If so, it is not convincing. There is still no actual documentary evidence, no detail about the dates of these orders, and the proposition relies wholly on the unsupported testimony of one man saying that this was what was found and interpreting it in a very specific way. Any researcher will see that there is neither context nor chain of evidence here. Paint orders are evidence of something - if we can get to see them - but not as a single, unequivocal obviation of the possibility of Sky undersurfaces. However I will blog about this and provide some more information which, I believe, does go towards supporting the proposition.
Regards
Nick
oops! my bad.
ReplyDeleteit's supposed to have www. before the network54....
sadly, he does not state the documents specifically nor where they reside.