Vought F7U-3P Cutlass

Maciej Bellos
I need some help from all you people out there. I cannot determine what colour is used for the wheel wells. Fujimi states that they are silver, but considering that the 12 Photo Cutlasses were produced circa 1954-1955 I tend to accept that interior green is the correct one. As for the wheel well covers I think they where painted in aluminum dope or something.

Finally the cockpit seems to be grey with black consoles but the ejection seat is something of an unknown.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Mat

Urban Gardini
I think that the use of interior green in the wheel bays was phased out around '52-53.

Maciej Bellos
Hi Urban,

According to the following link:

tailspintopics.blogs..ue-to-graywhite.html

white wheel wells were not officialy required until 1956. Before that they where sea blue, zinc chromate or white.

Since there were only 12 F7U-3P, all in natural finish, I would expect them to have the wheel wells in zinc chromate or interior green and not white or blue. The argument is that since they were not painted ever until their retirement in 1959 (even the official switch to light gull grey over white was not applied to the photo cutlasses) and remained in natural metal finish I suppose the wheel wells were not painted either. Just my two cents.

Does anyone else have any other ideas?

Maciej

Urban Gardini
Nice info mate! My conclusion of that is that the wheel wells would've been left unpainted. But painted wheel wells do spice up a NMF bird quite nice.