"Tex Houston" wrote in message news

Guess you never saw an F-102, F-106 or even an F-101. The name of the
paint
was even Air Defense Gray. Nothing new with the advent of the F-16.

Tex,

Sure, and even some ADC-tasked F-4s and T-33s (the Keflavic F-4Es come
to mind). Different gray, altogether - I don't think the glossy ADC
Gray was a camouflage at all! I was referring to the air combat (for
lack of a better term) flat multiple shade of gray scheme that the
F-16 introduced and that has quickly spread across the whole world, it
seems. I don't remember seeing any air defense (Guard or Reserve)
F-15s in ADC gray, but I could just be getting old...

Even the Navy switched from it's glossy gray and white paint schemes
to a very flat multiple gray scheme (which seems to really get dirty
on ship!).

Not particularly good looking, but very effective in the air, which is
what counts in the end, after all.

Interestingly, if you look at the late WW2 german camouflage schemes,
especially their nightfighters, they seem to have come to almost the
same conclusion about the best color to hide a plane in the air. By
that time, they probably has so many extra (fuel-less) planes that
their main concern was airborne concealment (to save valuable pilots),
so they moved to shades of gray.

I always thought that the Southeast Asia scheme (green/brown on top,
white bottom) was an amazingly stupid way to "camouflage" an airplane,
unless you are going to park it on a dirt road in the jungle (most
ramps aren't painted green and brown), or upside down in snow. In the
air, if you are close enough to see colors, you might as well turn
your gun on - and the white belly flash would attract aggressors for
miles around when you made a low altitude comm out turn. The
wraparound dark green European 1 scheme was a huge improvement,
although it did take some learning to initially figure out which way
lead was turning in tac spread!

Sigh, those were the days...

Kirk