67th FS/247th FG P-39F #80/‘Pepper’
Panama Canal Zone, Late 1942 / Early 1943

David Thor
After building Short Stroke, i was unsure which scheme i wanted to do for the 2nd kit in the guadalcanal box. I finally decided for Pepper with it's unusual scheme. While trying out my Trumpeter Riveter on the plastic parts, i am currently researching the color scheme and it's confusing and so far a dead end. Eduard specifies olive drab and medium green, while the "medium green" in the manual is everything but medium green. I wouldn't mind much about this, but the two profiles i found use a sandy-brown instead of medium green. And the single black and white picture of Pepper i found would support this choice. Or maybe the light parts are olive drab and the darker parts should be medium green? Well, if anyone can shed light on this topic... i would be very grateful! 🙂

David Thor
It seems i found a plausible solution to the problem of the right colors. The USAAF did indeed use a tri-color camouflage scheme on P-39 for some time, where medium green was applied over olive drab to break up the shape of a plane. The olive drab used to fade very quick and appear much lighter than the medium green. So Pepper should be medium green over a very light and faded olive drab when she arrived at Guadalcanal. The brown/green camouflage as seen in this projects banner is probably wrong. The parts marked as olive drab in eduards instruction sheet were probably medium green and vice versa. Hope that makes sense. 🙂