White-nose P-39 Airacobras from 213 giap, 22 giad


by Michal Sekula

September 5, 2015
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The 22 giad (Guard Air Fighter Division) at the spring/summer 1945 used the white diagonal stripe on the tail as a fast recongnition element. Its fighter reqiments used following colors:


Typically for 213 giap in that period, the planes had painted Alexander Nevskij Order emblem on the left side door while Guard emblem on the right side door:




This P-39 Airacobra is interesting with the bright repainting on the fuselage:



When standard paints from VVS inventory is considered, there are basically two options - blue-grey AMT-11, which is quite dark and light brown AMT-1. German paints do not seems to be probable alternative in this case.
"Polevoi Remont" instructions, in the part about the L-L planes, clearly indicate that nitro paints have to be repaired with nitro paints and that oil paints have to be repaired with oil paints. Were P-39s painted with oil paints? If yes, then AMT nitro varnishes should be excluded.
From VVS oil paints there are basically two options - A-24m green and A-21m light yellowish brown. A-24m, similar to AMT-4 and 4BO green over Olive Drab background (blue circles repainting) almost disappears on bw photos. A-32m Dark grey is too dark. So A-21m bright similarly on Il-2 seems to be the right candidate.
For A-21m I tried a mix between two upper chips:



Plane "104" on the same photo has disc under the fuselage red star. Standard USAF insignias from that period had white rectangles with blue outline on the sides, so this looks like it was repainted still in US to Bell "transport" marking, e.g. red star in the white disc and subsequently white disc was repainted green in SU. So I added AMT-4 green disc under red star also onto "103".




Here follow another Airacobras from the same 213 giap and from the same time period:















References and sources of the photos:

vif2ne.ru/nvi/forum/0/0.htm (VIF)
http://crimso.msk.ru
www.sovietwarplanes.com/board