Last US aircraft to have yellow wings before WWII ?

Musicman59 wrote the following:

Yellow wings usually denoted trainers. Maybe they had some trainers in OD, but why would they bother to waste the paint?

Musicman59 wrote in news:1223d908-0c44-417c-86a8- snipped-for-privacy@x18g2000pro.googlegroups.com:

Hmm, Navy - NM, silver dope, light gray. Biplanes and any monoplane up to early 1941.

Army, True Blue, glossy OD. But now that I think about it, I can't remember an Army monoplane with yellow wings, just the bipes. Take it back, P-26.

Yellow Wings Decals says P-35, P-36, P-38, P-39, P-40.

They offer decals sets that are in that category, anyway.

Those seem likely but I cannot actually recall ever seeing anything but the P-

26 and the Biplanes so painted.

Don't forget the B-10. I hear Williams Bros made a great kit of it ;)

I have a photo of a Grumman F5F-1 Skyrocket from 1940 with yellow wings. I have read that any fighter before April (?) 1940 would have been done up with Yellow wings. After that point, aircraft were painted some form of O.D. Green over grey. The Air Trails Annual from

1941 shows a P-35 in NMF with pre-war stars (with red ball) and candy stripe rudder, so the yellow wings would have been gone by that point. According to the 1957 Air Trails Annual, the yellow wings were done away with in 1940. If you'd like, send me an e-mail and I'll attach the articles in question and send them to you as they've all been scanned. My e-dress is braungart (at) verizon (dot) net.

my book showed, from memory, a P-38 and a B-17 with yellow wings. Could be fun to do anyway. too many rules in the hobby anyway..:(

Craig

In Army service combat aircraft went to natural metal finishes starting in

1937, and then went to OD over gray camouflage in 1940...and even then it wasn't a universal shift. The yellow wings persisted in Primary and Basic trainers, as well as in some Advanced trainers.

The Navy, Marines and Coast Guard kept the (chrome) yellow in their schemes a little while longer, but likewise combat planes shifted to gray camouflage in 1940. Coast Guard flying boats kept the yellow wings (and tails) with natural metal fuselages for a while till they were forced by wartime necessity to draw aircraft from Navy stocks in Navy blue camo. Again, if it was a non-combat type such as a trainer or liason transport, it was more likely to be still in yellow paint.

Stephen "FPilot" Bierce/IPMS #35922

eyeball wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@s9g2000yqd.googlegroups.com:

The Mon-kee is gonna getcha.

snipped-for-privacy@s9g2000yqd.googlegroups.com:

My son loves Curious George. I'll introduce them.

Big reason for yellow wings is finding crashed aircraft. Post WWII some B-17s were painted that way. Air Sea Rescue had a lot colored in large swaths of yellow. Later international orange / red was a favorite, especially in SAC where they were flying in the Northern parts of Canada were even as late as 1950s lots of areas on maps were marked 'unexplored'. International orange was on a lot of MATS aircraft flying over the Pacific, at least until Vietnam started up. Paint was sort of gritty. Maintenance used to give the old cans away if you wanted them on base. Not a lot of takers.