Camouflage for US aircraft depended on the stage of the war. In the early stages olive drab and grey bottoms were the norm and towards the later stages bare aluminum and black and white invasion or recognition strips were more common.
Jugs (P-47's) and P-40 warhawks and P-38's as well as the early bombers B-17's and B-24's had Olive Drab and Grey in the early stages of the war for minimum camouflage when viewed from above on green fields and against the sky with the grey bottoms.
However, camouflage is only important when you are on the defensive and it was not long after the US entered the European theater with large numbers of aircraft and crews that base defense and therefore ground camouflage was not as critical. In fact the bigger concern was being mistaken from the ground as axis aircraft and was one of the reasons for the black and white invasions stripes being kept on many aircraft well beyond D-Day. Being recognized was more important then not being seen.
Throughout the war most US aircraft stuck with olive drab and grey and towards the end of the war when the allies had total air superiority we stopped painting the aircraft all together -both fighters and bombers and so in the late stages of the war you see most of the planes in bare aluminum although many were still painted with invasion stripes for ground recognition.
In the early part of the war England was certainly being attacked and was perilously close to having unsustainable losses of aircraft and crew just due to overwhelming numbers of German aircraft. This of course was the great battle of Britain arguably the greatest air battle of all time. The need for ground camouflage was therefore more important. Had the Germans not decided to switch from targeting the British air bases and other air defenses to carpet bombing the cities the loss of royal air force pilots and planes and air defenses would have been unrecoverable.
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675
Last edited by ctbram; 06-02-2012 at 05:08 AM.