[Llarry]

It occurs to me that I have posted a large number of photos of U.S. Navy aircraft taken over many years without explaining the colors. Suffice it to say that a full explanation of colors from the beginnings of Navy aircraft until now would take pages and pages of mind-numbing text. But I think I can briefly describe recent decades.

Navy and Marine Corps aircraft were very colorful in the 1920s and 1930s -- the so-called "yellow wing" era when the upper wing surfaces were painted yellow. There were also varying tail colors and engine cowling colors that denoted the unit. I won't go into those as that is wall-of-text stuff.

In December of 1940, that era came to an end as the aircraft were to be painted overall light gray. The national insignia remained a large blue circle with white star and a red dot inside the center of the star. (not pictured)

In October 1941, just before U.S. involvement in World War II, new painting instructions were issued. Now upper surfaces -- as seen from above -- would be blue-gray while lower surfaces remained light grey. Rudders were to be striped with 13 stripes of alternating white and red.

It was soon found that any red was frequently taken as Japanese and there were instances of friendly fire. Accordingly, in mid-1942 the rudder stripes as well as the red dot in the national insignia were eliminated.

In January 1943 the color scheme was completely changed: Now upper surfaces were sea (dark) blue and lower surfaces were white, with an intermediate color of medium blue dividing the two. The scheme lasted most of the rest of World War II. And it goes without saying that when a new color directive was issued, it took quite a while for all aircraft to be repainted.

In June of 1944 the scheme changed again -- this time aircraft were to be painted overall sea (dark) blue. This overall blue scheme lasted for years -- only in 1955 were the colors changed to gull gray on upper surfaces and white on lowers. That two-tone scheme -- originally designed to minimize damage from nuclear flash -- lasted almost thirty years when the overall gray scheme that is still used today was introduced.

During the early part of the gull gray/white period, helicopters and patrol planes were painted engine gray, frequently confused with sea blue. In the late 1960s, they were repainted gull gray. Patrol planes were normally painted white on top rather than the bottom, to better reject heat.

That is the vastly simplified version of Navy and Marine tactical aircraft colors from the 1920s to today.