Dutch Brewster Buffalo Colours

[Owen]

Hi,

Just got a quick question that I need solving - does anyone know what the colours should be for a Brewster Buffalo of the East Netherlands Air Corps? The aircraft I'm building is one of the in-box options in the 1/48 Tamiya Kit. However, when translating the colour callouts into Humbrol colours, it says it should be H72 (Light Khaki) and H155 (Olive Drab) - yet in written text, it says the aircraft should have green/olive drab uppersurfaces. I'm clueless as to what the green should be? I've sprayed the uppersurface in H155 Olive Drab so far, but need to know what the shade of green should be. It's obviously not H72!

Suggestions on a postcard please!

Thanks,

Owen

[Old VG 33]

Hello

Should be FS 34092 - Humbrol 149.

Patrick

[Matt Roberts]

34092 (Euro One Green) is what I used as the darker color on one of my builds (Hawk 75).

I have also used a WW II ANA Medium Green along with the OD on my later Buffalo build.

The important thing is that the green should be a darker 'bluer' green than the 'brownish' olive drab. So I'd avoid a RAF dark green or a SEA USAF Dark Green as the darker of the two colors.

Thank gawd I don't have to muck with Humbrol or RoG color codes Stateside!

Matt

[Steven Eisenman]

From Jim "Mr. Buffalo" Maas:

Jim Maas

Smoking some Old Leaf...(long)

They were VERY similar to OD/MG.

The reason I say that is that I have held the two colors in my hand. A number of years ago, Jerry Casius sent me two pieces of metal from an ex-Dutch Buffalo which had been diverted to Australia. He asked me to tell me what colors they were. Jerry asked this because he is color blind, and so he could not 'see' the colors. At the time I did not have an FS-595 deck, so I matched the colors to a book called "United States Camouflage WW II" by J. Frank Dial. Here are the notes I wrote at the time:

"Two pieces, [each] roughly one and a half inch by one inch, jagged edges. One close to J. Dial book OD!! (but just a little bit browner). One a little darker than (but same family as) Med[ium] Gr[een] 42 - "minty" flavor - definite dark green - no trace of olive (which Dial [book] seems to have)"

The FS-595 deck I now have is the 595A version. The USAAF 41 chip in the J. Dial book is very close to FS 34086, but as my notes indicate, the actual chip was a bit browner. So 34088 seems okay to me. The USAAF 42 chip in the Dial book matches 34079 exactly (I don't think Dial was using a good source for this color), and I noted at the time that the 'green' chip was more of a pure green. To my eyes, 34092 is a good match.

The official order to camouflage ML-KNIL aircraft was issued in August 1940. Obviously, the Hawk 75's were painted in the East Indies and I have no information on the source of paint for these aircraft.

Olive Drab 41 was available in September 1940. Since the Brewster 339C's and D's were being completed (and painting would be one of the last jobs done) in February and March 1941, there is no reason to think it would not have been available to the Netherlands Purchasing Commission.

Dana Bell insists that Medium Green 42 was introduced later. He does not think it would have been available in the same time period. That may be so. However, Brewster had already built (and painted) Belgian 339B's in April 1940. They used a dark, very pure green that looks a lot like Medium Green 42 in good color photographs. Perhaps Brewster used this color with OD 41. So even if the New Leaf is not Medium Green 42, it was very close to it.

There's additional 'circumstantial evidence'. On a freshly painted aircraft, in black-and-white photographs, the two colors are almost indistinguishable. However, once exposed to the weather, OD was famous for weathering and becoming much lighter than Medium Green (which weathered much less rapidly). So a new airplane will show the two colors as very close, an older aircraft will show a distinct difference. And that is exactly what happens with Brewster 339C/D's! In the factory, it is difficult to tell the two colors apart. In service in the strong East Indies sun, the Old Leaf becomes much lighter, and (in black-and-white photos) looks very much like RAF Dark Green/Dark Earth. So unless you are building models to represent factory-fresh machines, something like a 34088/34092 combination should work very well.

Again, I cannot claim knowledge of the colors except for Brewsters. CW-21's were painted at the factory so they were probably similar to the Brewsters. Curtiss Hawks and Martin 139's were painted 'in the field' so you might want to show a different Old Leaf - perhaps a little greener and not as olive as OD.

Smoking some more Old Leaf

October 30 2007 at 10:01 PM Jim Maas WKBS (Login jimmaas)

HyperScale Forums

from IP address 64.12.117.18

Response to Netherland's East Indies aircraft colors??

There has been more info coming out of the Netherlands; from what I've heard, ML-KNIL veterans have remembered 'old leaf' and 'young leaf' as close to (!) the two greens used on the 1970's USAF TAC scheme: 34079 (a deep green) and 34102 (a lighter, somewhat more olive green). From the chips that I've seen, I still suggest that the darker green (young leaf) is more saturated (greener, because less grey) than 34079, although the value (relative darkness) is about the same. The lighter color, 'old leaf', was still a green (mea culpa for using the term 'OD', which after fading covers a wide variety of colors) but more olive and greyer. To me, 34102, the lighter of the two USAF TAC greens, looks reasonable, although I'd brown it a tad for a machine that had been in service for a while. For the dark green, though, 34092is the closest thing in FS595.

[Owen]

Thanks for the help chaps, problemo solved!

Owen

[John @ WEM]

Accurate WW2 Dutch AF colors, produced as part of our Colourcoats line of enamels, are available exclusively from MW Models, at http://www.navalmodels.com.

[Old VG 33]

Again, I cannot claim knowledge of the colors except for Brewsters. CW-21's were painted at the factory so they were probably similar to the Brewsters. Curtiss Hawks and Martin 139's were painted 'in the field' so you might want to show a different Old Leaf - perhaps a little greener and not as olive as OD.

Hi

The same for the C-60 Lodestar ???

Patrick