P-61 Black Widow Wing Tank Color

[SoD Stitch]

Just finishing up on Revellogram's 1/48th P-61B Black Widow, and I want to paint the optional wing tanks "camoflage gray", or whatever color gray the undersides of the original P-61A were. My research suggests they were "neutral gray", FS36270; is this correct?

Other sources suggest they could also be the same gloss black as the a/c, but I want to make it a little more interesting. Please advise.

[Wurger]

Hi mate,
To be honest it is not easy to pick something up.In some pictures ,I've seen so far,it was visible that the additional fuel tanks could be painted both with Olive Drab/Natural Grey camo and Grey paint.Certainly if an a/c was painted with OD/NG pattern.For planes that were painted with Gloss Black it is possible these tanks could be painted with the same colour.I think you have to find a pic of this a/c you want to make.Certainly it would be nice if there would be visible these tanks.Besides in my opinion the Grey colour was NG one - FS 36270 but taking its quality and the time of using of an a/c into consideration,the tonality of the paint could be a bit different.

[Wurger]

Hi again,
According some russian sources these fuel tanks were silver.I've found two pics in that there are visible those.The first one shows the first P-61A-1-NO equipped with additional fuel tanks.The second one presents P-61B of 548NFS in 1945.Although both the pics are poor quality it seems that the tanks are glossy.There is a possibility these weren't painted at all.