Aero Vintage Books

A nice B-17C interior photo. This is in a few books, but I owe the
picture to wreck-chaser Nick V. Thanks Nick!
Thought I'd share.

Note the 4 longerons in the rear fuselage, and the step ladder
opposite the door.

It looks as though the interior is painted silver. Note the lack of reflections. Can anyone verify this on early B-17s?

yellow zinc chromate, not silver ?

Hi, I agreed with you that the interior is painted, If the picture is more clear I can judge it very well. Is there any other picture to share here? I am from Australia and working for Untied Interiors (https://www.clicknbuyaustralia.com/bran ... interiors/) since last 5 years and very well familiar with the interior and what is being used.

we do know the 299 interior was bare metal

If you study the shade of the interior and compare it to the life raft container, it does look like the color might be yellow chromate. My special study is the YB-17s, and many of the photos I've collected show the YBs to have been painted with silver lacquer on the interior. This C photo has much flatter finish and is darker.

If you compare the hinge point of the waist-guns (which is definitely unpainted chrome) the interior is painted; the question is what color.

A simple test is simply apply some Chomate Yellow and some Chromate Green and see which one disappears in Black / white (greyscale)

Once done, it is clear that 90% chance the interior radio room bulkhead is Chromate green

That is a good test--it certainly leads one to green. I had/have some doubts about the yellow when I posted that reply and you've pretty much convinced me it's green. As I mentioned earlier, I spent 99% of my research on the YBs but the question of the B/C/D interior color had come up among a group of us. If I can remember who was in that group I'll steer them here!

Totally unrelated, but the B-24 was a true PITA to nail down for interior color. All the different firms seemed to paint the interior, especially the rear fuselage, in whatever color they wanted, most notoriously on the earlier production.

One of the things I’ve found as I chase data on my Fairchild restoration, is that there were two major colors of zinc chromate, with quite a bit of variation between companies as well as batches of paint for each of the two colors. I’ve spent a lot of time chasing down “Bronze-Green” and it’s led into real rabbit warren of questions and data.

cvairwerks wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2019 10:59 pm One of the things I’ve found as I chase data on my Fairchild restoration, is that there were two major colors of zinc chromate, with quite a bit of variation between companies as well as batches of paint for each of the two colors. I’ve spent a lot of time chasing down “Bronze-Green” and it’s led into real rabbit warren of questions and data.

Oh heck, if you want lots of fun, try researching Japanese warships of WWII. The IJN specified a very specific color grey, however, each shipyard in Japan developed their own approved shade of official IJN Grey.

Then there is Consolidate Aircraft, pretty sure they would buy paint that was left over and on sale for that week. You look at some B-24E's and the paint is already peeling before it has left the builders airfields.. The interior colors (as pointed out before) ran the gauntlet from bare metal, to yellow, to cromate yellow, to dark green to primer red (btw, Strawberry Bitch's interior should be bare metal, but her interior was sprayed in the late 1960's green)

Yes, the B-24 program was interesting, to say the least. I was researching an early Fort Worth built airplane and hadn't a clue as to interior color since they were knock-down kits. By total chance I met a gentleman who worked at the plant until his draft number came up and he told me that the early ones were yellow chromate--he worked in the paint department that sprayed the aft sections and said he probably still had yellow primer in his lungs sixty years later!

Bronze green is a whole other can of worms--I've tried to crack that nut too!

I’ve pretty well cracked the Bronze-Green one. I know someone that has a decent, non faded color chip page along with the full AN-3 specification. I need to get him to go have it run under a scanner to get a set of numbers. With that, I can compare to the FS 15xxx numbers that are supposed to be very close.

I ran across this topic, and thought of this Alfred Palmer photo of a B model:

https://images.app.goo.gl/JHXNn6u667Lz6Fo89

Hope this helps.

According to the finish notes for the B-17C,
the interior was sprayed with an aluminum lacquer
aft of Bulkhead 6.