PBY Paints

VP-14 Patch

I saw that I somehow forgot to add the squadron insignia to my pre-WW2 paints of the section leaders of VP-14. It was easy to miss, being in an unusual (but not unique) location on the mid-fuselage, just forward of the waist blisters. Still, I should've spotted it - especially since I didn't miss it when I modeled one of these planes in plastic some years ago. In fact, it was a glance at the plastic model that tipped me off to the omission in my virtual paint jobs.

That little green triangle is a stylized representation of a Sitka Spruce tree, significant of the squadron's service in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, but by the time it depicted in these paints it was stationed in Hawaii.

I've uploaded the fix to the library and I've also attached it here. It's just two little files that are to be dropped into the appropriate texture folders. Since there aren't any other markings on that part of the planes, the same two files work for all of the VP-14 section leaders.

No, there won't be a similar update to the VP-52 paints, as that unit really didn't apply a squadron insignia to their planes.
 
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Another one

I've painted another classic era PBY. This one is an RCAF Canso in post-WW2 Air-Sea Rescue livery.

I've put it up in the library, so it should appear later today or maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here's a picture:

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A few scruffy snaps of RAAF Cats, showing the grey countershaded uppers on the mainplanes and the generally 'lived in' paint work.
FYI, amphibians were not well liked and many were converted into 'Boats', which were heartly detested by the RAAF crews.
As my Dad remarked, they were slower and handled badly compared to the genuine boats, and even an Amphibian was faster.

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OX-D was one of his early No.43 Squadron aircraft, while OX-V was one of the last, a Boeing built '-6'.
And a PS: The RAF profile JX431 shown in one of the previous posts was most likely operational out of India and wears the RAF 'SEAC' Dark Blue/Light Blue roundels.
 
Neat pics! Thanks for posting them.

Interesting how they painted the top of the wings. I never would've guessed. I would've figured the planes were completely black, like American "Black Cats." That made me wonder if the American planes were painted like that too, but I checked some photos and they were not.
 
The AlphaSim may be long in the tooth, but I still fly her often. So, YES, please post all your creations.

Bob
 
just a little note of interest, years ago (I won't say how many :- ) ), my high school shop teacher had ben a mechanic in one of the PBY squadrons at Pearl Harbor and he told me that they took one of the surviving PBY's and sent it out on the night of Dec.7, 1941 to look for the Japanese fleet. There was concern that it would be too visible so they hastily painted it all black. They were concerned that the Black gloss paint they had available would shine to much so they dumped flour into it to get homemade matt black paint.
 
Mick, I modified your Squantum Naval Air Reserve paint to represent an aircraft from NAS Glenview, Illinois where I first joined the Navy in 1965. Reserve paint jobs were pretty standard back in the late 40's so I figured it would be almost identical to the Squantum bird except for the Glenview markings and a different BuNo. Your efforts on all these PBY paint jobs are most appreciated, I had not done any texture work in a while and it gets pretty tedious even when making simple changes.
 
norab said:
just a little note of interest, years ago (I won't say how many :- ) ), my high school shop teacher had ben a mechanic in one of the PBY squadrons at Pearl Harbor and he told me that they took one of the surviving PBY's and sent it out on the night of Dec.7, 1941 to look for the Japanese fleet. There was concern that it would be too visible so they hastily painted it all black. They were concerned that the Black gloss paint they had available would shine to much so they dumped flour into it to get homemade matt black paint.
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Interesting tale!

The Navy then painted it's "Black Cats" in the Solomons and New Guinea with a flat finish, and the Army painted its early night fighters flat black. Later in the war tests showed that gloss black was actually harder to see in the night sky. Rather counter-intuitive, I'd say, but that's what they found out. That's why they had flat black PBYs and P-70s, but glossy P-61s.
 
TARPSBird said:
Mick, I modified your Squantum Naval Air Reserve paint to represent an aircraft from NAS Glenview, Illinois where I first joined the Navy in 1965. Reserve paint jobs were pretty standard back in the late 40's so I figured it would be almost identical to the Squantum bird except for the Glenview markings and a different BuNo. Your efforts on all these PBY paint jobs are most appreciated, I had not done any texture work in a while and it gets pretty tedious even when making simple changes.
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Looks great!

I've sometimes done that with other painters' paints, to assign a plane to a local or sort-of local base. Squantum was our "local" Naval Air Station and Reserve Air Base in the forties, until it was closed and all its units moved to the old, reactivated blimp base in South Weymouth sometime in the early fifties. In this case, it happened that the only photo I found of a post-war Reserve PBY happened to be a Squantum bird.

I wanted one with the orange Reserve band, and one with the yellow Rescue markings. For the Rescue plane I did what you did - I had a photo of a PBY with Rescue markings but from a different base, and I when I painted it I reassigned it to Quonset Point. That's my next most local Naval Air Station, and one where I went to some great air shows back when it was an active Navy base. I copied the yellow areas and Rescue markings from the stock AlphaSims USAF OV-10A paint and stuck 'em on my Dark Sea Blue base color.

Painting is tedious enough, but much more so on this plane because of the way the textures are mapped. What you paint on your monitor screen is almost never what you get on the model in the sim. And the differences aren't the same among the various texture files. Very annoying! I found references for a really colorful post-war Catalina that I couldn't paint because two parts of the plane were mapped to the same texture file and couldn't be made different colors.

As it is, there are some little bits of my paints that aren't the right color. The triangle of fixed lower wing surface that fills the space in the movable float strut is the most common, but there are a couple other spots on a couple other paints. I can't say that it's impossible to get those spots the right color, but I sure couldn't figure it out. I downloaded a couple repaints by painters much more skilled and experienced than me, and I saw they they couldn't figure it out either. But those bits are small and not very noticeable, so I don't mind too much. For free paints on a free model, they look pretty good and I'm glad to have them.

I will say, though, that if someone was just starting to learn to repaint planes, they should probably not start with this one.
 
TARPSBird - are you going to post that paint job? It's excellent work and was wondering if you wanted to share it.

I used to work at the day office at Glenview before leaving in 1995 for Hawaii.
 
SSI01 said:
TARPSBird - are you going to post that paint job? It's excellent work and was wondering if you wanted to share it.

I used to work at the day office at Glenview before leaving in 1995 for Hawaii.
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Feel free as far as I'm concerned; don't hesitate because you just changed the markings on my paint job. I'll grab a copy for myself if you put it up in the library.
 
Can do, I'll zip it up and upload it tomorrow.
SSI01, I grew up in Northbrook right next door to NASG. In the 1950's we lived on Shermer Rd. right on the approach to Rwy 17, I got to watch a good bit of Naval Aviation pass over our house every day. If you ever ate at Tonelli's Restaurant on Waukegan Rd. that was our family pizza place.
 
From what I've read in Dad's logbook this op had a very high pucker factor!
Apparently this was the end result of lightly (!!!) clipping the mast or similar clutter aboard a Japanese destroyer (which wasn't supposed to be there) while flying at 'low' altitude somewhere around (I think) Rabaul.
The damage wasn't bad enough to RTB so the crew pressed on, completing their op and touching down, only to have the float 'dig in' and remove the weakened section of the mainplane ............. one might say most of the mainplane!
Poor quality image but it is 70+ years old and was shot with a rather basic camera.

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TARPSBird said:
Can do, I'll zip it up and upload it tomorrow.
SSI01, I grew up in Northbrook right next door to NASG. In the 1950's we lived on Shermer Rd. right on the approach to Rwy 17, I got to watch a good bit of Naval Aviation pass over our house every day. If you ever ate at Tonelli's Restaurant on Waukegan Rd. that was our family pizza place.
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First - apologies to Mick, I'd forgotten he was the original author of that paint job. Thanks for giving the OK!

TARPS - Thanks in advance for posting. It's a very attractive job.

Do you remember the Nabisco factory that was located near the back gate to the NAS? When the wind was right that smell from their ovens used to waft over that entire base and make a lot of us hungry.
 
Ouch! Betcha the boys in the Airframes shop missed the evening movie after that bird came back. :biggrin-new:
 
The NAS Glenview PBY paint job has been uploaded, file name Glenview_PBY-5A.zip. Sorry for the delay, I got a little overcome by household routine the past couple days. Thanks to Mick for his permission to upload the file which is simply a mod of his NAS Squantum paint. :encouragement:
 
SSI01 said:
TARPS - Thanks in advance for posting. It's a very attractive job.
Do you remember the Nabisco factory that was located near the back gate to the NAS? When the wind was right that smell from their ovens used to waft over that entire base and make a lot of us hungry.
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I do not remember the Nabisco factory, it probably came to Glenview after I left for active duty in 1968. Frankly I don't remember anywhere near the amount of industrial activity around the base back in the day as there was in the years just before it closed.
Here in Norfolk our version of the Nabisco factory is a cooking spice packaging plant over by Norfolk International (KORF) and when the wind is right our neighborhood smells like my Grandma's spice cabinet. Brings back pleasant memories. :)
 
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