Recently, I was wondering about the Liberator painting scheme from the 31st Squadron. I am curious about your opinions. I have a theory that it was painted all in Olive drab, and then in RAF / SAAF service dark earth camouflage patches were added and lower surfaces were repainted in Night color. What do you think about it?

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

@lis, I agree with @tcinla : makes sense to keep the OD as "dark green" and spray-on the other colors. Especially if you look at the inner side of the starboard fin, you may see a rectangular color patch onto the "original" color (possibly to paint over a s/n or likewise): the "original" will almost definitely be the classic OD, which they decided to keep, otherwise all the fin would have been painted.

The fresh green would be whatever dark green or OD the would have available there, my friend @lis. The other shade would be dark earth (or whatever darkish brown would be available there). From the picture it looks like the bays have different shade than the underside color: if so, zinc chromate is very likely to be.

@fiveten I think the part that is in a different color is more like the Turbo-Supercharger.

@fiveten @tcinla I think the landing gear leg may be black. Is it possible to use a paint scheme like for example Halifax, where the landing gear recesses were repainted in the color Night? From the airfield staff's point of view, if I had me painted, I wouldn't worry about masking the recesses, but driving everything in black.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

That's just the fact the landing gear is in shadow. They came out of the factory painted in aluminum lacquer and would not have been repainted. As far as the wheel wells are concerned, they came out of the factory painted interior green and there would have been no reason to paint them black.

Not a complaint or put-down, but there's a point in researching these things where there's a sign by the side of the road that says : "Warning - Overthinking Pitfalls Beyond This Point" 🙂

@tcinla And let's stick to this version 🙂

@tcinla Did B-24 have bomb bay painted in Zinc-Chromate?