Paint Jobs
I’ve seen C-17’s come off the assembly line in California painted “A.M.C.” gray. After just one flight, I have seen paint blow loose, minor scratches from maintenence and things like that. By the time the airplane made it to it’s assigned base, the paint had been touched up more than once by the factory. The paint never matched. I have seen some come to the base with two or three different shades of AMC Gray.
In 2002, I saw a C-17 that had suffered damage from land mines being repaired in Turkey by Boeing employees. The new gear doors were flown in from the states and they were a different shade of gray than the rest of the plane. The plane, by the way, was only about two months old at this time so I know that age and weather hadn’t taken that much of a toll in that short amount of time.
On the interior of C-17’s and C-130’s alot of the stencils will be in different positions from plane to plane. The exception seems to be fuselage stations, but I have seen them painted wrong at the factory or at major refurbishment on a couple of occasions.
When I was still flying on C-130’s we had planes that had the entire nose repainted a different shade. I have seen Herk’s with wings, fuselage, nose and tail surfaces all different shades of the same “Federal Standard” of gray. Several years ago, I had a fellow loadmaster run a truck into the side of the plane. When the sheet metal was repaired, it was painted with a spray can. Three years later, the wrong color gray was still on the plane.
I guarantee that you can walk along any Air Force base and look at five seperate planes painted the same color and they will all be different. The markings will usually be slightly different as well. Especially if any of them have been through refurbishment. The stencils and unit markings are have usually been repainted in slightly different positions and sizes.
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