C-47 Interior color references

OD green works. what insulation? It was bare metal. much later they put stuff in, the grey AF stuff. light grey works fine.

They might have chucked in removable airliner seats, something they could bolt to the airframe, think kind of a light shade of dark brown, not tan, but not dark brown. mostly was canvas along the side with seatbelts. hopefully they put them in right, if not the crew chief could fix them with a wrench.

Look at the old WWII B&W prints, probably better bet would be to work with strip styrene to replicate what the airframe looked like inside.

Like anything else there might have been unpainted ones somewhere inside.

This one is hard to pin down. Assuming we are talking standard-issue WW II US; Green Zinc Chromate for the cabin and Bronze Green for the cockpit seem to be the most popular.

OMFG. The color police will go ballistic...

Seems to me I remember these "seats" folded up to the fuselage sides. Weren't they just arms that came out of the sides and the canvas webbing went between pairs of these arms? Been a LONG long time :-)

Let us not forget that many C-47s were drafted from the airlines. Does anyone know whether they went through some refit other than stripping out the unnecessary appointments?

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

I think far more were built than were stripped from the airlines.

There's more conversion from ex AF to airlines now, so that you can't tell from looking what wasn't added on.

1941 HAG has one that flew in D Day invasion. Was used by an oil company after the war before they got it. I can guarantee the wet bar was not standard AF equipment. Or the seats, executive desk, map board, and on and on. Its up in Geneseo NY.

I don't think C-47s were, but there were some prop jobs that were bought back from civilian users to fly in Vietnam and later. That led to some Federal Regs they buried in the fine print that they could always 'take' an airplane back after it was surplused. Not sure it would stand up under a real court challenge but its caused a lot of heartburn among air museums.

I remember C-54 had seats on side also, or they could put in the off brown 'airline seats', though usually not a full airplane, then they just put stuff in the back that you tied down. The way the airlines are going, I'm not going to be surprised if you just bring your own stuff on the airplane and tie it down yourself and carry it off. They can save on baggage handling. Save a ton on seats with webbing, meals piece of cold chicken in a box. Heck, candy bar and an apple and its first class.

What is interesting is looking at the old photos and seeing what they actually did load into a C-47, that would make an interesting diorama. Besides the cases of beer and Scotch.

weren't a lot of dc3's drafted and converted to c47's? that wouls include removing the regular interior and cutting a crago door. plus mil radios and electronics.

I remember an old AF joke. When the AF retires its last manned aircraft from inventory, they will fly all the dignitaries there in a C-47.

No doubt with a U-2 doing the overhead...

and a p51 covering.