"All over black" Spectres?

[Hajo L.]

Hello all!

I´m planning on building the 1/72 ESCI AC-130H Spectre Gunship. I´m going to use the decals and markings that were included in the Spectre-Kit of Airfix. The Airfix-box and instruction-sheets says that the Spectre is all over black. I´m not sure if this is true, because most pictures I know about black Spectres (obviously they wore black in Vietnam) show them with the top of wings, fuselage and hull in the standard SEA-camo.

Can anyone confirm that "all over black" Spectres existed?

HAJO

[Sean Bratton]

It's been awhile since I've pulled the book out, but the excellent Squadron book Gunships: A Pictoral History of Spooky has references to overall black AC-130's. I seem to recall these being A models in Viet Nam, but again, I haven't read the book in a while.

Hopefully someone here will have the book handy and can confirm.

Cheers,

[aircommando130]

The AC-130A's and the AC-130E's were painted an overall flat black toward the end of combat operations in SEA. The AC-130E's started out with the same weapons as the "A"...2x20mm 2x7.62 and 2x 40mm...when they added the 105mm in the troop door the aft 40mm was removed and the engines were upgraded to T56-15's...that changed the MDS to AC-130H. After the war...late 74 early 1975...they started painting the 36118 gunship gray paint and added the air refueling receptacle to get gas from the KC-135. HTH...Ron

[Hajo L.]

Just to clarify:

Beginning of Spectre-operations in SEA: Black with SEA-camo on top

End of War (1971-72, I would think): all over black.

Right?

HAJO

[aircommando130]

That time frame is pretty close...but remember...it took awhile to get them all painted the same! And then later you had airplanes painted overall gray with flat black bottoms till maintenance could put the airplane on jacks and put the gear up and spray the bottom of the fuselage to match...