Aero Vintage Books

Anyone have any ideas as to what colors Intermountain's B-17G N809Z was painted during "Operation Coldfeet" in 1962?



I have color shots of it with the single blue stripe in "Thunderball", and the later "1968" scheme, but haven't found color pics of the early marking.

I've found a number of B&W photos (including in "Final Cut"), but no suggestions of the colors. Appears the stripes may be red (judging by the prop warning stripe)? What is the underside color? Gray?

I would like to build a model of this aircraft. Any help is appreciated

The underside is more than likely bare metal.

I would like to see better detail of the rig attached to the front of her

DIK SHEPHERD wrote:The underside is more than likely bare metal.

It doesn't show too well in this picture, but the pics in "Final Cut" and "Praetorian STARShip" show the wings and underside are definitely painted.
As the aircraft had gray wings and belly in "Thunderball" in 1965, I'm assuming it did also for this scheme. However, the tone of the undersides in this photo seems really close to the tone of the GPU, so I'm wondering if the underside might actually be yellow! That would certainly be colorful.

gary1954 wrote:I would like to see better detail of the rig attached to the front of her

"Final Cut" has a pretty good pic of the clamp assembly on the nose that caught the cable, but not the trapeze horns. I think there might be a good pic in the Detail and Scale book, but I don't remember for sure.

gary1954 wrote:I would like to see better detail of the rig attached to the front of her

Dug up some of my books this weekend. There are a couple good pics of the Skyhook installation in William Leary's "Project Coldfeet", including a two-page spread of the crew posing in front of the aircraft, which shows the trapeze horns and sky anchor pretty well.

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...this thread is 10 years old, but here's the answer to the '1962 color' question for N809Z....from cia.gov....

. JD

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for- ... rctic.html