Brian Mennenoh (@brithebuilder)
The interior of the rear fuselage tail wheel strut bays on Vought built birdcage and early Dash 1A "raised cabin" Vought versions were painted in a red oxide primer called / known today as "Salmon". This shows the color as this ultra rare early "Birdcage" Corsair was being restored by the dedicated crew at the Pensacola Naval Air Museum.
Goodyear build Corsairs used a Yellowish Green Zinc Chromate here. It was not normally painted over though, and left as is.
The Corsair is my all time favorite plane and I have studied them for years. I would be happy to help you with color information. I have collected a lot of it over these years.
The books I mentioned by Dana Bell are outstanding. He actually has written two of them on the Corsairs. One is dedicated to the birdcage version, while the other covers the dash 1A and 1D variants.
This next picture shows the main landing gear well on the same Corsair that was pulled up from the Great Lakes. It was remarkably preserved. You can see how some of the "salmon" is showing through, where the Non Specular Light Gray has worn away after being underwater for many years. This was a birdcage Corsair, so it left the Vought factory in a different color from the dash 1A.
These birdcage Corsairs left the factory wearing Blue Gray on the top side, and Light Gray underneath. This shows the main landing gear wheel wells were painted using the same color as the rest of the underside was (minus the folding wing portions).
Hope this helps.
