"Can anyone recommend colours for Hellcats and Zeros?" Topic

Preferably Vallejo if possible, been a long time since I've painted any historical aircraft…
Cheers, Mick

Zeroes could be steel with a black cowl. not sure about them if you want the green or camo.

Think Zeros are grey the shade varies depending on who made it (Mitsubushi or Nakajima) and how long ago

looking at doing late war ones if thats any help?
Cheers, Mick

Up until a few years ago, Zeroes were thought to have been a very light cool grey, nearly white. Although some may have weathered to a chalky white, this is not the color original gray paint used.

More recent research indicates the color was much more like a pale brown/ beige color. The Pollyscale Railroad paint color "Used Concrete" is often quoted by WWII A/C modellers as the best match.

Vallejo has a color,I believe called "Medium Grey," that would probably work. It is a grayish color with a strong brown component. I don't have access to my paints right now, but I can look up the number later. Cowl would be black or a blue/black color. Later in the war, zeroes were commonly camoflauged with a dark green on upper surfaces. Something like Vallejo's Reflective Green would be in the ballpark. The undersides would be the same light brownish gray.

Hellcats could be overall Dark Blue, or a Sea Blue/Medium Blue/White camo. I think Vallejo makes colors to match the 3 tone scheme.

Lots of reading here j-aircraft.com click on 'research' and follow the links

I've been wondering about the correct color for Zeroes myself. I have a Tamiya Color paint, J.A. Grey, number XF-14, that's a light grey with a very slight greenish cast to it. It looks like a pretty close match to the recently restored Zero at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. I don't recall whether this particular Zero is painted to represent an army or a navy aircraft (I'll be visiting there tomorrow, so I'll take a look and let you know). I'm not even sure if this distinction matters, as I don't know whether army and navy Zeros were painted in the same shade of grey. However, I did find this color reference chart on an IPMS site that appears to indicate different shades for army and navy aircraft:

link

Lastly, here's a link to a 1/144 scale kit by Sweet Models, which states "Molded in the newly discovered authentic ZERO's color "Light Olive green," similar to British "sky.""

link

Since I mentioned it above, here is a photo of the Zero at the NMUSAF. Although it's hard to tell in this photo, the grey paint has a distinct greenish tint to it.

picture

The Vallejo color I was thinking of for the Zeroes was Model Color 987 Medium Grey.

It is true that the Japanese Army Air Force had it's own paint specifications, different from the Navy. Generally still green over light gray or bare metal, but somewhat different shades. However, I've never heard of the Army using any version of the A6M Zero.

Vallejo Green-Grey 886 is another possibility, although it might need a drop of white added to lighten it.

I use Poly Scale and Testor's. The IJN gray for the Zero needas a slight greenish tint added. For a late war (late 43-45) A6M5 the main camo was IJN green on the upper surfaces and IJN grey undersurfaces.The cowl was flat black. The leading edge of the wings from root out to the cannon were IJN yellow as a quick ID feature. But the poor quality of Japanese paint meant that these birds weathered very quickly in service, often with entire patches of camo paint coming off.
For the Hellcat, what time period? For the late 43-late 44 era, the F6F wore three tone blue, with non specular (that means flat) sea blue on the upper surfaces of the wing, stabs and fuselage, intermediate blue on the tail fin and fuselage sides and all undersurfaces in white. The demarcration lines between the colors was feathered and indistinctas the camo was pplied at Grumman with an airgun.
After the F6F-5 started production, USN camo for fighters changed to an overall gloss sea blue. This was officially in April of 1944, but it took a while for freshly painted aircraft to reach the front. For the F6F, the overall sea blue examples started reaching the fleet in the Pacific in the summer of 1944, right after the Marianas campaign, but tri-clored F6F-3s continued in service right through the Phillipinnes campaign. BTW, when the overall gloss sea blue camo was instituted, Grumman deleted the insignia blue portions of the US national insignia, so the all blue Hellcats wore only the star and bar with no surround.

Lance/Corsair

Here's another photo of the Zero on display at the National Museum of the USAF.

picture

This aircraft is painted to represent a section leader from the carrier Zuiho at the Battle of the Bismark Sea in March, 1943.

This is all interesting stuff. I had been trying to emulate Rikyu Watanabe's Type "0" Model 21 color sceme from the "The Great Book of WW II Airplanes" in years past. It appeared to be a white/light gray color. Would this be an accurate IJN color for early carrier aircraft only?

Probably

John CHOTU, a Honiaru, Guadalcanal resident and American Charles HAGEN, examined and documented the aircraft remains of A6M2 s/n 3647 as follows:

"Overall scheme was a severely weathered flat, pale gray. Pieces, which were protected by overlying coats of paint or overlapping pieces of metal, were dirty light olive or gray-green."

from

link

Black Bull's suggestion to check out j-aircraft.com is good advice.

The Zero was painted an olive-gray colour from the start of its production. The aforementioned Pollyscale Railroad paint color Used Concrete is probably the best paint for small sized wargaming models.

This olive-gray colour was used on Zeros built both by Mitsubishi and Nakajima. When the upper surface dark green camo was adopted in March or April of 1943 the olive-gray paint continued to be used on the lower surfaces of the plane.

The paint on Zeros was usually of very good quality up until the end of the war. Most Zeros did not have much paint chipping. The IJAAF, on the other hand, did not apply a primer before applying the camo and their planes were the ones that quickly started to look shabby.

Ryan Toews

I came up with what I thought was some pretty good color matches for IJA and IJN grays.

TMP link

Dom has a good suggestion for early war blue, and I think that is also the mid-tone blue used in the tri-color pattern. I haven't really been happy with a dark blue yet.

Digging around this is a possible dark blue: Vallejo 051 Prussian Blue