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All the P-38 Lightning Questions You Want to Ask Here and Maybe Some Answers Even ??


JohnT

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First question below but into first

 

Considering we have a Group Build for the Lockheed P-38 Lightning later this year and tempus fugit only too quickly I thought it might help to start a P-38 thread for questions and hopefully answers -  a bit like the Spitfire and Hurricane threads that we benefit from.  I got approval thumbs up from @trickyrich and I hope that @Enzo Matrix and the mods approve.  I've put this into the WW2 section and trust that's the right place for it.

 

I've been planning a build of a backdated 1/32 P-38 for at least two years.  I've had no time to build kits due to the day job and a new house self-build.  What I was able to do was undertake a fair bit of reading and book/article collecting on early P-38's and as usual I found more questions than answers and lately information that suggests that some matters and facts set in concrete suddenly don't seem to be so certain.

 

Anyway I am sure folk wanting to participate in the GB will ask away on Lightning questions and hopefully we can collectively come up with the right - or maybe the least wrong - answers.

 

FIRST QUESTION

 

One thing I can say.  I've bought my "olive drab" and Neutral grey paints for my early P-38 knowing they cant be wrong.  I was happy until I read Tom Cleavers build article on the Tamiya P-38 on Modelling Madness. 

 

He has spent a long time actually looking at Glacier Girl in the flesh as it were.  As I am sure you all know Glacier Girl was the famous P-38 preserved in ice for half a century and recovered from under the glacier where she force landed on a delivery flight.  He makes the point that the restoration was meticulous and the owners paid a great deal of attention to the paints used on her by Lockheed and matched them.

 

Starting with the cockpit he reckons that the interior paint is not as we think but is a light grey-green colour close to British Interior Green.  The Olive Drab topside is closer to RAF Dark Green and the Neutral Grey is what was called back then "Sky Grey" - a very close match to RAF Sea Grey Medium.

 

Tom writes he spoke with a former Lockheed employee who had worked in the paint shop there.  She said that Lockheed had been very short of paint and really only had the paints they were using for the Hudsons which had been mixed to RAF specifications.  Another employee confirmed the shortages and the use what we have position.

 

So do I need to re-think my paint pots?  Maybe someone out there can advise?  Where is @Dana Bell when you need him !!?

 

More on wheel wells  and weathering panel lines later

 

John T

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Hi

    you using the grey matters resin conversion ? 

  often wonder what it is like

 

  or

is there an injection 1:32 P-38 E/F /G ? 

 

     cheers

        jerry 

 

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/grey-matter-aviation-gmajr3211-p-38-lightning-backdate-conversion-set-p-38d-e-f-g-rev-trp-kit--959041

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6 hours ago, JohnT said:

One thing I can say.  I've bought my "olive drab" and Neutral grey paints for my early P-38 knowing they cant be wrong.  I was happy until I read Tom Cleavers build article on the Tamiya P-38 on Modelling Madness. 

 

He has spent a long time actually looking at Glacier Girl in the flesh as it were.  As I am sure you all know Glacier Girl was the famous P-38 preserved in ice for half a century and recovered from under the glacier where she force landed on a delivery flight.  He makes the point that the restoration was meticulous and the owners paid a great deal of attention to the paints used on her by Lockheed and matched them.

 

Starting with the cockpit he reckons that the interior paint is not as we think but is a light grey-green colour close to British Interior Green.  The Olive Drab topside is closer to RAF Dark Green and the Neutral Grey is what was called back then "Sky Grey" - a very close match to RAF Sea Grey Medium.

 

Tom writes he spoke with a former Lockheed employee who had worked in the paint shop there.  She said that Lockheed had been very short of paint and really only had the paints they were using for the Hudsons which had been mixed to RAF specifications.  Another employee confirmed the shortages and the use what we have position.

 

So do I need to re-think my paint pots?  Maybe someone out there can advise?  Where is @Dana Bell when you need him !!?

I don't thinl you need to rethink your paint pots John

 

the link

https://modelingmadness.com/review/allies/cleaver/us/usaaf/fighter/tc38f.htm

 

" which I think can be identified as “RAF Dark Green” for the upper color and what was called back then “Sky Grey,” the color mistakenly used by US aircraft manufacturers in place of RAF “Sky,” which is also a very close match to RAF “Sea Grey Medium,” for the lower color." 

Tom Cleaver is a very good writer, but he's also very sure of his ideas, and too often they are wrong.

 

Medium Sea Grey is NOT close to  the US 'Sky' , MSG is surprisingly dark,   which is why it's not Light Sea Grey. 

Actually, having stared at the RAF chip intensely and matched it, it's a very subtly purple hued mid grey,  

 

the US 'Sky' equivalent has been discussed here on several occasions,  specifically 

 

despite being called 'Sky Grey' it's not grey,  though when i looked at the FS 595 chip ii was very subtly not grey, but nothing like Medium Sea Grey. 

 

The question is, if Lockheed were making Hudsons, what color were they being painted at the time. 

 

further to my comment on Mr Cleaver re colours, here's another example

https://modelingmadness.com/review/allies/cleaver/gb/spit/tc2.htm

 

"The Eagles received their Spitfires on August 17, two days after August 15, 1941, which is an important date in the history of RAF camouflage. On that date, all RAF fighters were to be repainted in the new “Temperate Day Scheme” of a disruptive upper pattern of Dark Green and the new Ocean Grey, with the lower surfaces painted Sea Grey Medium. There was a shortage of the new Ocean Grey, and so the directive stated that the upper color could also be a “Mixed Grey” obtained with a 50-50 mixture of Sea Grey Medium and Night (Black), or with black and white. Since all of this was done “in the field,” the results differed markedly from unit to unit, with the upper color ranging from a very light to a very dark grey. In the old Profile publication, “Camouflage and Markings: Spitfire in Northern Europe,” one of the profiles is of P7308, and it is the only source that clearly states that the colors were Mixed Grey and Dark Green upper surfaces, though they get Sea Grey Medium lower surfaces, which is likely incorrect. However, given that the entire photo proof for this airplane is two B&W photos, such mistakes are understandable.

I first learned of the Sky undersurface when I asked my friend and former-Eagle Barry Mahon about this 38 years ago. He told me all their Spitfires came from other units, and some where in grey, some were in sky, and “some were even blue.” This also applied to the codes; since the RAF had specified “Sky Blue,” by which they actually meant what is now known as “Duck Egg Blue” (which Eduard gets right on their sheet), some squadrons took that literally and did the “Duck Egg Blue” areas in a light blue.

What is most likely is that on August 27, 1941, P7308 was painted in the “B” scheme camouflage, with upper colors Mixed Grey and Dark Green, with lower surfaces Sky, the spinner, fuselage band and codes in light blue. (If you don’t want to go to the effort to correct for this, no one can prove you wrong if you use the Eduard decals unmodified, and it in greys) Since these colors would have been applied at the base level, they would also have been “freehanded” with a spray gun, resulting in soft edges for all three colors, with Mixed Grey overspray on the Dark Green, which would have been the only color not repainted.

For Dunn’s airplane, I used Tamiya XF-53 “Neutral Grey” for the upper color, with Tamiya XF-82 “RAF Dark Green” and Tamiya “Sky” with 30 percent white mixed in to get the correct shade. The “sky Blue” was a mixture of Tamiya XF-4 Flat Blue and XF-2 Flat White."

 

Now, this is the first, and only time i have ever heard of the theory that when the change from TLS to DFS took place, some aircraft retained Sky undersides.

I can believe that when aircraft arrived,  from other units, they may have not been repainted.  

It is noted that there were mixed grey due to the shortage of Ocean Grey, this has been noted often.

what I doubt is that that Sky undersides were retained when aircraft had their upper repainted.

 

this is the actual page from the Ducimus he mentions, as well as why Sky was replaced.   

Supermarine%20Spitfire%20Camo%20&%20Mark

 

from https://boxartden.com/reference/gallery/index.php/Camouflage-Markings/Supermarine-Spitfire  

 

I really enjoy Tom's background stories, and he's interviewed many veterans,  but now I just don't trust his colour stories without some other collaboration.    

 

As always, happy to be proved wrong,   and for this I hope @Dana Bell see this and contributes.

 

HTH

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12 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

Tom Cleaver is a very good writer, but he's also very sure of his ideas, and too often they are wrong.

 

I haven't read the article in question so I can't comment on whether it's a mistake on the author's part or a misunderstanding on the reader's part, but suffice to say one should refrain from colour matching in the dark...

 

04418820-db55-4bfe-a920-0653ef5e207b.png

 

These are all distinctly different as can be seen above.

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My experience is that a 'neutral gray' model paint based on the US colour chip, or Tamiya XF-53 neutral gray out of the bottle, are far darker than what shows in contemporary images of P-38EFG Lightnings 1942-43.   If you put this on your P-38, its going to look very odd compared to period photos.

 

Simple solution - just lighten your 'neutral gray' with a lot of white to achieve a tone that is more similar to reality.  My interpretation of the photos is that it should resemble something like the darkness of the 'MAP Sky Gray' chip in the above post.

 

ilj

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1 hour ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

 

I haven't read the article in question so I can't comment on whether it's a mistake on the author's part or a misunderstanding on the reader's part, but suffice to say one should refrain from colour matching in the dark...

 

04418820-db55-4bfe-a920-0653ef5e207b.png

 

These are all distinctly different as can be seen above.

 

Just one point.  Dupont, at least, had a "US equivalent" Sky Gray and a Sky Type S Gray, which I suspect is the one you intended.  I believe the Dupont Sky Gray was a close match to the intended colour.

 

I suspect (don't know) the P-38s were, like another West Coast manufacturer Boeing, painted in Fuller paints rather than Dupont.  I haven't seen a Fuller colour chart, but photos of Bostons (from another West Coast manufacturer) appear to show an acceptably close approximation to Sky - allowing for colour printing inexactitudes, of course...  Not Sky Gray, anyway.

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Here`s a new P-38 question

In some pictures the ground clearance to the bottom end of the tail booms looks to be about 18’’, in other views the plane looks almost horizontal when standing on its undercarriage. Is this a cog change caused by different fuel loads in the tanks?
regards Toby

Edited by Planebuilder62
typo corrected
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Or, it may depend on how hard the brakes were used to stop it for parking. We had this occur regularly on the Pilatus PC-9.

Hit them hard and the nose bobbed down, the nose leg went down to it's stops and back to the top.

Brake gently and it stopped level.

It's a relatively small Aircraft so it was easy to level off by lifting at the rear or pulling down on the spinner.

Probably not really an option on the much larger P-38.

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5 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Or, it may depend on how hard the brakes were used to stop it for parking. We had this occur regularly on the Pilatus PC-9.

Hit them hard and the nose bobbed down, the nose leg went down to it's stops and back to the top.

Brake gently and it stopped level.

It's a relatively small Aircraft so it was easy to level off by lifting at the rear or pulling down on the spinner.

Probably not really an option on the much larger P-38.

From what I have read, and what others have commented upon here on BM, a fully loaded and fueled P-38 would have a pretty level stance,  as the nose strut oleo would be compressed; a lightly loaded or empty P-38 would have a more extended oleo and a decidedly tail low sit; if the oleo was over charged or under charged with oil, it would cause a tail down or level sit. Hitting the brakes hard when coming to a stop also can  cause  the nose oleo to compress and then rebound, causing a tail down attitude- maybe also because the weight when landing is a lot less than on takeoff.  You can see both sits pretty equally in period photos. Personally, I like the tail down sit for the Lightning and the F7F Tigercat.

Mike

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On 08/01/2022 at 19:32, brewerjerry said:

Hi

    you using the grey matters resin conversion ? 

  often wonder what it is like

 

  or

is there an injection 1:32 P-38 E/F /G ? 

 

     cheers

        jerry 

 

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/grey-matter-aviation-gmajr3211-p-38-lightning-backdate-conversion-set-p-38d-e-f-g-rev-trp-kit--959041

 

 

Hi Jerry - Yes thats the one.  No early 1/32 P-38's that I am aware of so you have to go the conversion route.  Seeing the resin its pretty decent and you get a vac front canopy/windscreen that's quite different from the later marks.  The early cockpit set done by Gerry Rutman  and also by Cutting Edge seem unavailable anywhere but on looking hard at some decent cockpit photos scratching should not be too problematic.  I'm not entirely sure how accurate those early Cutting Edge cockpits were on the radio deck behind the pilot but its mostly rectangular boxes to scratch and I think I might manage that !!

 

I am adding a set of Grey Matter props which sort the shape of the kit ones.  I also picked up a set of metal reinforced undercarriage legs from Synthetic Ordnance Works in the Sates.  If you are doing anything in big scale and its going to be heavy or just want some beautiful legs on your model have a look at them on his site.  All his stuff is lovely.

 

I'll be adding some Eduard etch and Karego decals, Master gun barrels and Aires wheels.  I had bought some True Details wheels - at least I think they are wheels.  They ain't round and they ain't pretty.  Dreadful casting - lumpy and looks like the flattened area was added in Milliput but never finished off.  Even the hubs are not circular.  Still one lives and learns.

 

 

@Troy Smith , @Graham Boak@Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies and @ilj  Many many thanks for the helpful information.  I am going to read it all again carefully and will stick with the accepted wisdom of you guys.  Thanks for taking the time to answer so fully.

 

 

Now did I mention wheel well colours ? :wicked:  More of that later

 

 

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