"French aircraft colour schemes in Indochina" Topic

Hi total newbie question here as I'm lookig at gaming the Indochina war. I'm im the process of collecting some 1/144 French aircraft, whilst the Navy Hellcats and Corsairs are well illustrated in their midnight blue paint scheme, i'm having difficulty working out the exact finish for the Cobra's.

Below are two examples off the internet, the upper image clearly show's a natural polished metal finish, whilst i'm unsure to the bottom image. It looks like a frosted metal/ white finish, similar to some images of earlier 30's French aircraft I have seen on the net. Is this the actual colour or is it meant to represent a bare metal finish similar to the image above?

Any help on this very much appreciated, thankyou in advance

Definitely bare metal – some artists simply depict it as a light grey, but they were NMF, with an anti-glare black patch on the nose.

Wow didn't know they used P-63s in Indochina.

Seems to have been political – the US blocked the use of French P-47s in Indo China, and as they still had a good number of P-63s in storage (as well as some operational in north Africa) they broke them out to fill the gap.

Yep, all the Kingcobras were natural metal.

Basically, all aircraft used the schem of their previous owners, so Spitfires and Mosquitos were in late war British camo, P-63s natural metal, Hellcats and Bearcats in US navy blue, B-26 in natural metal with a couple of black night bombers, all transportds were also natural metal except for a few early C-47s in OD.

Naval air Dauntlesses were in three-colour mid-war USN camo, Hellcats and Corsairs in navy blue.

There's a run-down of which squadron used which aircraft for the whole of the Indochina war here: link

Excellent link Risaldar Singh.

The transports were indeed initially in bare metal but a lot of them ended up sporting black undersides with a wavy margin between paint & metal on the sides. It made them less visible to the VM on night flying operations.

Yep, the transports flying night ops over Dien Bien Phu did have their lower surfaces painted black but that was quite a late development.

Until the later stages of Dien Bien Phu, the VM flak concentrations were too weak and too far from the drop zones to make much of a difference.

Nice gallery of French Indochina aviation here link