"WWII carrier plane paint schemes in 1/2400" Topic

I'd like to paint up some 1/2400 scale carrier aircraft to fight battles using my GHQ 1/2400 ships. I know some people mix their scales by using 1/300 aircraft with their 1/2400 ships. I don't want to do that.

I'd like to use a unique color scheme for each of the major classes of carrier aircraft so that I can tell what they are at a glance.

For example, a basic set of Japanese carrier aircraft would include the Zero, Val, and Kate. What colors would you suggest I paint these so that I can easily tell them apart at a glance?

Similar question for the US with Wildcats, Dauntless, Devastators, and Avengers.

Off white/light gray for Zeroes. Green for the Kates. Val's present a little problem as they can be either Light Gray/off white, or green depending on what time frame you want to cover.

I hope this helps.

Basically as Scarfcom1 said. The Japanese are faded green/gray and the Americans are blue topside and gray bottoms. All of them, fighters, bombers are painted similarly.

I suggest you paint the aircraft stand/base different colours to distinguish between nationalities and types

Wings Palette has lots of examples but I find it hard to navigate
wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f

I believe those off-white Zeroes really were a faded grey-green; the off-white came from basing colours on wrecks that had faded further.

Some discussion is here:
link

Thanks gentlemen. You've given me an idea. I think I'll take the aircraft counters from Command at Sea and attach them to the stand. Then I'll paint the aircraft to match (more or less) with the counter.

More discussion of early IJN gray-green here. Here's a restored Zero painted in the color being discussed:

This color is a somewhat recent discovery to us old guys (for many reasons including those listed above), but has actually been known for years, and you can buy paints in this color now – Testors and Tamiya offer it in both brush-on and spray can formats:

The IJN dark green was called "black green" for a good reason; it's dark!

The smaller the model, the darker it seems. If you're painting 1/2400 or even 1/1200 scale aircraft, I highly recommend painting them a shade or three lighter, like a slightly deep Kelly green. Tiny planes have very little surface area, so if you paint them the "real" black-green, they'll just be black dots to the human eye in most circumstances, especially under artificial lights.

The gray-green might be light enough to use right out of the bottle, but I would still be tempted to go a shade lighter on a microscopic airplane.

Getting back to the OP, here's an alternate suggestion:

• Zeroes: gray-green overall, black nose
  
• Kates: gray-green bottom, dark green top, black noses
  
• Vals: like Kates but with red tail (possibly with yellow stripes, if you can paint that small)

That Val color scheme was not widely used (maybe only on Soryu…?), but it would be easy to spot from a distance:

- Ix

The restored Zero referred to by Yellow Admiral was repainted about 10 days ago. The paint, which was matched to the first paint application, is an exact match to FS 34201 link

If you paint the Zeros with the olive-gray colour and the Vals and Kates with dark green upper surfaces you could distinguish between the latter two by using yellow wing leading edge IFF markingson either the Vals or Kates. These markings were introduced in late August/early September 1942. The red tailed Val pictured above was a scheme found on only one plane to mark it as a unit leader.