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B17G wheel well colours?


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Building a few aircraft at the moment and one of them is Revells 1/72 B17G (4? 231909 OR R Nine O Nine 8th Air Force 1st Air Division, 1st Combat Wing 91st bomb group 323rd bomb sqn Bassingbourn UK April 1945).   Doing the wings first and it says to paint the wells an overal mix of 360 green silky matt 80% and 65 bronze green 20%.   Not sure I can get Revells paints but is there an equivalent in Humbrol or Tamiya paints?  

 

I've as usual done some photo reference surfaces without much luck so any photo's and references etc  of this particular aircraft would be most appreciated.   

Edited by Nightfighter
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The wheel wells on wartime B-17s were unpainted aluminum.   Restored warbirds tend to be painted inside for long-term corrosion protection.  That wasn't really a concern during the war, when factories needed to crank them out as quickly as possible, and the average combat plane's life expectancy was a few months at best.

 

SN

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1 hour ago, barkin mad said:

Here's one I found, unrestored & some parts painted with what looks like interior green. They may of course not all have been finished like this.

 

-----------------

 

HyQC0eY.jpg

Where did you find that picture?   On the web or in a book?   Since this was a completely unrestored B-17, I’d love to see more pics of her.  

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Great pic!  I was curious about if any paint was used.  I understand some of the internal structure of the wings was painted for fire resistance.  I presume that was why parts of the wheel well were painted.  Of course, with three different plants building thousands of them over a three-year span, I'm not sure how much consistency there was. 

 

SN

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To pile on, here are a few I took of EAA's  Aluminum Overcast many years ago (over 20 I'm sure) of the starboard nacelle. The front bulkhead is to the left in the first pic, looking at the rear bulkhead in the second and a closer look at the duct in pic 2 in the third pic. Wish I had gotten more but there was a crowd as I recall.

g-1.jpg

g2.jpg

g3.jpg

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On 2/8/2024 at 2:39 PM, 11bee said:

Where did you find that picture?   On the web or in a book?   Since this was a completely unrestored B-17, I’d love to see more pics of her.  

 

I got it from another site. I think it's from a book, no idea which one, sorry.

 

I did find this site, which has plenty of pics on it.............they have a farcebook site as well.

 

https://b17alliance.com/restoration/

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