The entire subject of WWII US aircraft interior colors is one that is quite interesting -- at least to me -- and has come a long way in the past decade thanks to the research efforts of Dana Bell, Larry Webster, and others. Everything that we knew in the 1960s and 1970s, that all US aircraft had candy apple green interiors, turns out to be wrong. Unfortunately, most restored war birds and museum pieces have been painted with this erroneous conventional wisdom, further perpetuating the myths.

To make a complicated story somewhat simpler, there are four main interior colors for WWII era US aircraft:

Interior Green -- matched to FS34151 (the Federal Standard system did not exist during WWII, by the way), this is what we commonly think of as the most prevalent interior color. For the most part, it is. By the end of the war, a large number of US aircraft were using this as the primary interior color. P-51D and Ks, B-17Gs, B-26Fs, and P-38s, among others, were using this for their main cockpit color. Note that Interior Green started as a formula, and not a specific pre-mixed paint. Add black to untinted Zinc Chromate primer (which is a sickly yellow), add some aluminum paste (later deleted) and you get Interior Green. The fact that it was mixed at the factory and was subject to human error and you see a lot of variation. Curtiss Cockpit Green (used on P-40s, Helldivers, and the 200 P-47Gs that they made) was simply another variation of Interior Green made by a local paint vendor, Berry Brothers, for Curtiss to use. Lots of model paint companies make Interior Green.

Bronze Green -- matched to FS24058. My friend Larry Webster of the New England Air Museum "discovered" the use of this color and created a firestorm of controversy when it appeared in the Accurate Miniatures instruction sheet for their TBF-1C Avenger kit in 1996. But Bronze Green, which is very dark and has a semi-gloss sheen to it, is seen in a number of early US aircraft. The F4F-3 and -4 Wildcat cockpit was painted with it, as were the cockpits of early B-17Es and Fs. It was also the cockpit of the TBF Avenger when it was produced by Grumman. There is no direct model paint match, but if you add a lot of black to Medium Green FS34092, you can get a really good approximation.

Dull Dark Green -- matched to about FS34092, it's just a little bit darker. P-47s, B-24s, later B-17s, and B-25s used it for the cockpit, and it appears that B-25s and early P-51s did too. You also see it used as a anti-glare panel color on BT-13s. I add a couple of drops of black to Polly Scale Medium Green FS34092, or use Polly Scale's RAAF Foliage Green right out of the bottle.

Medium Green -- an exact match is FS34092. Used on some aircraft late in the war, this color wasn't all that popular as an interior color. The famous "Bell Green" is most often matched to this color for P-39 and P-63 cockpits. The X-1 also had a Medium Green cockpit. I use straight Medium Green from the Polly Scale line for this color.

One thing to be very careful about: there are no absolutes with US aircraft interior colors. I have friends who have spent their lifetimes researching the subject, and what they find are tons and tons of exceptions. I've held pieces of crashed P-47Ds in my hand that should be Dull Dark Green, but were painted Interior Green, I have seen pieces of wrecked P-47Gs that should be Interior Green that were painted Dull Dark Green, and I have on my desk right here in front of me pieces of a B-17G that crashed in 1945 that I dug up from a farm -- some are Interior Green, some are Dull Dark Green, and some are Bronze Green!

All we have are educated guesses about interior colors. For a P-47, using Dull Dark Green in the cockpit and Chromate Yellow in the wheel wells matches our understanding of Republic specs and interpretation of color photos.

But all this makes modeling fun, yes?

Lee K