Why are all missiles white, and all bombs olive drab?

[NARSES2]

My Dad who served in 617 Sqn 1944-46 at the time they were using Tallboys and Grand Slams, told me when he saw me painting a Grand Slam to the colours Airfix calls out for it, that it was wrong and that the bomb casings were actually left non-painted as they came from the factory. Only the tail cone and fins got painted in Interior Green.

Interesting. When you see war time footage and photos of these you can often see the demarcation line on a lot of them. I'd always assumed it was two shades of green.

[Weaver]

Another interesting thing I found out about those 3" RPs relates to the dangers of museum research. Many model instructions will tell you to paint the rocket bodies green, and most of the ones you can go and see in museums are green, so it seems right. However, it isn't: live rounds were black. The problem is that when those live rounds exceeded their shelf life or became obsolete, 99.9% of them were destroyed. By the time anyone thought about preserving them for posterity, the only ones left to donate to museums were the inert handling rounds used to train ground crew, which were painted olive green, which is why 'every 3" RP you see' today is green...

[PR19_Kit]

My Dad who served in 617 Sqn 1944-46 at the time they were using Tallboys and Grand Slams, told me when he saw me painting a Grand Slam to the colours Airfix calls out for it, that it was wrong and that the bomb casings were actually left non-painted as they came from the factory. Only the tail cone and fins got painted in Interior Green.

The Haynes Dambusters book mentions that too, and says the same about operational Tallboys.

[zenrat]

Found this document via google which gives colour codes for Soviet munitions.
http://library.enlistment.us/field-manuals/series-2/FM21_16/116APPA.PDF

[Snowtrooper]

The US is actually painting new-made bombs and missiles grey nowadays to match the grey aircraft.

However, as eg. JDAM or Paveway consists of the fuse, MK80 or BLU series warhead, tailcone, fins, and guidance kit, it often happens that the warhead is still OD whereas the tailcone and/or fins might be grey - supplies of Mk80 series warheads (and tailcones) go way back to Cold War and since it's better not to waste anything, dropping the oldest warheads first makes sense. Consider for a moment that it was only a few years back when the last M-117 750-pounder was dropped (in Afghanistan unsurprisingly) from a B-52 - even though the bomb itself had not been manufactured since Mk80 series replaced it in the 1960's! Well, it was used only on B-52's as of late, but still. The same parts mixing is happening for missiles, for example old AIM-9P's are being refitted with L-model seekers and fins, presumably grey while the missile body remains white if it's not repainted.

Of course, back in the day US Navy painted their "own" non-missile ordnance such as Mk2 gunpod, LAU rocket pods, and Mk20 Rockeye (originally a Navy weapon) white to match the white undersides (though they had a special fireproof coating in their general-purpose bombs, they were still OD even in Navy service). And all services tended to leave napalm tanks unpainted (if the tanks even were "proper" tanks instead of just being old drop tanks of WW2 and Korea vintage - might be because these were mostly NMF, so to avoid confusion even the new canisters were left unpainted too so that incendiaries could be distinguished at a glance).

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Then there's Sweden, who paints practice rounds bright green instead of blue (and likes to show off these instead of live warheads in publicity photos, leading to the mistaken belief that Swedish missiles and bombs would be bright green). Live missiles were still mostly white (Rb04 anti-ship missile being multi-coloured), nowadays grey; bombs were the usual dark green also.