Korean Skies F-86A Operation Stovepipe skins

[gecko]

Stovepipe consisted of three Sabres painted with olive drab/green upper surfaces to help hide them from enemy aircraft that may be above them. Single aircraft flew over the Yalu river providing weather recon and acting as radio relays for allied patrol/strike ops during the summer of 1951. I could only locate photos of two examples of the three Sabres which had inconsistent application of the paint.

Thanks for the info!

 

[FOO FIGHTER]

@WesCov - I have that book and the Sabre you referenced belonged to 1Lt. Don Torres which is represented in my Stovepipe skins.

I located a second picture of Torres' Sabre here:

http://yocumusa.com/

It appears everything was painted over, stencils and all. Only the national insignia and FU-XXX number seems to be applied over the paint.

 

[WesCov]

That is really something. The book caption says that the camouflage experiment was a failure and that it was actually easier to see than when all silver. You can kind of see why from the photo: http://yocumusa.com/sweetrose/images/1950-53fr336/2018misc/336fu281a.jpg

The olive drab is almost black -- you'd probably see a black dot moving across the landscape!

Thanks for the website reference, it is just packed with Sabre history.

 

[FOO FIGHTER]

I try not to trust solely on museum or art renderings too much when they depict vintage aircraft. I would argue that most of the time they get colors and markings wrong (I'm sure they do their best). Looking at models and art of Torres' Stovepipe Sabre, they are depicted as FU-261/8261. Looking at the two photos (Squadron Signal book and yocumusa website) of Torres' Sabre taken during Stovepipe one can clearly see that the actual numbers are FU-281/8281. In the photos the fuselage number (FU-281) can be obscured by shadow or sun light but the tail number (8281) gives it away after zooming in.

You're right, the paint proved to be ineffective and actually reduced the Sabre's speed by 20 MPH.

 

[MajorMagee]

Here's a nice summary of the difficulty with finding the right camouflage for any particular situation.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0850688.pdf

Ultimately, whatever you select will be "wrong" most of the time because you are not typically being seen under the optimal design conditions (lighting, orientation, distance, weather).

p.s. This is even worse now, in that the spectrum we have to be concerned about extends well beyond the visible light spectrum (UV, infrared, radar, radio, audio, etc.).

 

[FOO FIGHTER]

I didn't mean to imply that they were incompetent. Perhaps I should have used "inexact". In my own experience as skinner, I try to use photos of the actual aircraft I'm trying to represent. On the other hand, sometimes a dated B&W picture will leave certain things open to interpretation when no supporting information is available. Then one must proceed accordingly whether they be in a museum or representing a Photoshopped facsimile in this forum.