Questions about Gulf War Vipers

[Phantome]

Viper experts, a few questions:

 

1) Were ALQ-119 pods painted white during the Gulf War? Most 80s pictures show them white but I can't really tell from the Gulf War pics if they still remained white or had been painted light grey by then. Also, some pods (namely ALQ-131s) looked quite dark, were they painted 36118 by any chance? Or olive drab?

 

2) When loading just two bombs on a TER rack, was the layout always outward/center or right/center? The dstorm.eu site has both port and starboard pylons as right/center but I find that a bit odd, but haven't seen a pic of an F-16 head on to confirm. If you don't get what I'm saying, what I mean would be this:

 

BOMB BOMB EMPTY ........... EMPTY BOMB BOMB

 

or

 

EMPTY BOMB BOMB .......... EMPTY BOMB BOMB

 

 

Thanks!

 

[Finn]

Normally if only 2 bombs were carried normally the inside rack of the TER would be empty, mainly for clearance, especially with larger diameter bombs like CBUs. Here is a pic:

 

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6473322

 

you can zoom in on it and you can make out the the F-16 in the foreground does have 3 Mk-82s while the one in the background has 2 CBUs loaded on the TER. Also you can see the colour of the ECM pods.

 

Jari

[Jabba]

I have just had a quick look through a few of the books that I have about this period and can confirm like Finn said, that in all the pictures that I have found show the bombs on the centre and outer racks of TERs. As for the ECM pod, I will have a longer look later and see what I can find, unless anyone else answers beforehand.

[Jabba]

I had a look in the Detail and Scale book about U.S. Aircraft and Armament of Op Desert Storm, and they quote the colour scheme of the ALQ-119 ECM Pods like this. A few were still white with black radomes, but most were olive drab with black radomes. Others were FS 36375 grey with olive radomes, and a small number of pods were a combination of grey and olive drab. When it comes to the ALQ -131 section, the book says that the colour schemes were the same as the ALQ-119. So I think that you can put almost any coloured pod onto a model from this time period and it will be correct. Hope this is of some help.

[Hook]

This is a good starting point for period pics:

 

https://www.dstorm.eu/pages/en/usa/usa.html

 

Cheers,

 

Andre