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Re: Gull grey and white & matt-black Corsairs

Posted by Rob Mears on Sun Mar 31, 2002 12:09:43 AM

In reply top Gull grey and white & matt-black Corsairs posted by Mick on Fri Mar 29, 2002 06:41:40 AM

It's safe to say that the red on flat black paint scheme was applied to relatively few of the -5 series night fighters, and I'll go so far as to say only a handful of planes belonging to VMF-512. If any aircraft from other units had this scheme applied I'd be interested to know.

F4U squadrons 'subdued' their schemes in various ways - overspraying white lettering with light blue, etc. All of the red on black planes I've seen were attached to VMF-512, with a number of those photographically documented as being sent into the field with standard white on blue schemes. Most likely the black was a field modification.

There is an F4U-5N painted as such at the Marine Corps Museum at the Mirimar Air Station in California (BuNo.122189).

Regarding the overall gull grey schemes, AFAIK all of those schemes were applied to Marine AU-1 Corsairs attached to post-war, Stateside units.

I thought for the longest time that Bob Bean's wierdly painted F4U-4 was the result of him piecing the plane together from various parts pulled from Navy storage. I later spotted a diagram depicting that as an actual military scheme! Possibly the result of early psycadelic expirimentation? ;) You'll notice the numbers on the plane match up as they seguey from color to color so it must have been a standard scheme.

Bean sold that plane to Merle Gustafson who restored it as "Angel of Okinawa". I somehow doubt the current owner (Mr. Weeks) would retrospray the plane in that particular scheme, but it WOULD make for one hell of a standout, authentic scheme!

Rob

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