Suggestions???

I used to flight test the B-1. There never was a NASA version. There was an all white version, for a while flight test aircraft were all white. There was a desert tan version, early 80s, that was neat looking. There was the European One version, bluntly you could paint the damn thing dark green and black, though photographs showed up the

3 tones a lot better than the eye did, the videos we used in the control room showed a lot more contrast that reality did. There was the grey version that they're all going to. It gets darker and darker. B-1As were white or the desert camos. B-1Bs were all Euro or the current grey stuff.

There are a ton on photos on the web if you google B-1 and do a search for photos.

Though nobody has the one where they were fueling it and CG went aft and nose went up. Ah its only money.....had 33 fuel tanks on it, fuel was stuck all over the place on it. Even had one in the nose.

The white ones were the Rockwell ones, right? First two?..

FS36118 Gunship Grey - same as an F-15E...looks sort of green in some shots.

...I think I have that picture at work someplace...maybe of a different one, but one sitting on it's tail...

First four, #1 through #4, those were the ones Carter cancelled. Tail for #2, B-1A/158 was the one that crashed, had a nice logo on it. B-1A/

001 was modified and kept in the B-1B program, B-1A/174 the last one left flying was sent to AF museum, in Euro camo later went to the Omaha SAC museum (its about 40 miles from Omaha, but its called the SAC museum - nice place.) Its been repainted in the current grey style it never flew in. B-1A #3 was sent to Rome AFB in NY, which later closed, as a maintenance trainer, don't know what happened after that. AF owned them all, but we had a Combined Test Program, CTF, Rockwell and AF flew flight tests together. Beats the old system of contractor doing stuff, then AF repeating it as they didn't trust them.

Schaeffer has a book out on the Arizona Boneyard with some B-1s on the cover, will order it shortly.

I wasn't impressed with the V-2 book, some photos were scanned and resolution of some original photos was garbage. I know the original photo was better, but you're looking at scan lines rather than details you could use for modeling. If that's the publishing wave of the future, references for modeling are going to be getting worse. Web site on line was much better.

I saw some published photos that B-1B/068 a/c #28 was still flight testing at Edwards, in grey scheme. Bit over 20 years after I first started doing data off of it.

Different aircraft were used for different things. B-1B/068 had the long weapons bay rather than the 3 bays of earlier models so carried the ALCM for tests. I seem to recall it did the first test launch of an ALCM out of the B-1B.

For a while there were some neat nose art on the operational B-1s, but that would be hard to see on 1/144 models. Some general ordered it all removed. Later it was allowed again. I heard rumors some was almost up to the WWII stuff but never saw a lot of the early artwork, maybe somebody has it in a box in a closet somewhere. Test aircraft never had any as far as I know.

Though one of the sergeants painted a nice mural looking at a B-1 face on at the front door of the CTF where you went left for data and test engineers and right for all the maintenance and tech order types. Floor to ceiling easily at least 10 feet or more along the walls. Outside the conference room where we did all the Flight Readiness Review (FRR) there was a 1930s photo, boots, white coveralls, leather jacket, scarf, pencil moustache, dashing figure getting into the cockpit, underneath was a title 'Rockwell test pilot'.