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

[seadude]

Probably a stupid question, but I've always wondered about the following:

Why are all missiles (or at least 80-90% of them) mainly white?
And why are all bombs (or at least 80-90% of them) mainly olive drab green color?

I hardly, if ever, see other colors for bombs and missiles. Whether it's in books, movies, anime cartoons, real life, or something else, the colors pretty much stay the same. Kinda boring really.

Anybody got any good ideas for different colors for bombs and missiles? The main body, the fins, the nose, etc.

[Steel Penguin]

its to denote a "live " round, as opposed to the blue used for practice / inert rounds.

[Logan Hartke]

So, first of all, many are colors other than that, but misrepresented in media. I realized that when doing the bombs for my SB4U Viking dive bomber. Quite often, bombs are actually gray. Most Soviet bombs and a lot of US Navy bombs were. During peacetime, some pre-war "live" bombs would actually be painted yellow. German bombs were often black or dark gray. Bombs come in a greater variety of colors, but the OD comes from two things primarily (as I understand it). The first is the fact that the main user started off as the US Army (Air Corps or Air Force, specifically), and anything the US Army bought after 1916 basically got painted in OD (with a glossy layer on top if you wanted to be "fancy"). For the purposes of standardization, this was forced on the Navy during WWII. The second reason is that bombs are often stacked up at airfields before final delivery and if you don't want something to be spotted from the air when it's laying on the grass, it's best to paint it green.

As for missiles, I'm not sure. It's probably because they were normally hung on the underside of aircraft from the earliest days, and those were either bare metal or painted white or light gray (same as missiles). It may also have to do with reflecting sunlight. Early electronics were very susceptible to heat and anything you could do to decrease its punishing effects might help reliability. That's a total guess on that second one, though. Pure speculation on my part.

Cheers,

Logan

[Weaver]

You see a lot of grey AMRAAMs with white radomes, and some Sidewinders have grey bodies too. A lot of Red Tops seem to have had grey or silver bodies and white fins.

I agree with what Logan said. I'd also add that a lot of pics we see are of test or inert demonstration missiles that are painted in the 'industry standard' white that may not be the same as the production rounds.

[zenrat]

During a war, why paint bombs at all if they are going straight from the bomb factory to the airfield to be used?
Did the bombs the RAF were dropping every night during 1943 get painted?  Strikes me if they did then it was a waste of paint.  Just stencils on the relevant data and numbers and send them off to be dropped.

I have a heap of bombs to paint for the Soviet GB Flogfoot.  I shall paint them something other than OD, black or grey.

[Logan Hartke]

I suspect a major reason is that they weren't going straight from the factory to the bomb racks. The empty casings may have been in outdoor storage until filled, then the filled bombs would be stacked and stored in the open on rail cars, in depots, and at the airfields. Unlike aluminum airplanes, too, bombs would have steel casings, and so be very prone to rust if not painted.

The two main reasons USAAF airplanes weren't painted starting in about 1943 were for weight savings (minimal for bombs which would only be making half the trip, anyway) and to save on man hours during construction (also minimal when you're talking about very simple bomb shapes).

The British military wasn't as keen on not following regulations when it was convenient as the US seemed to be. Considering that the British Army was repainting nearly all US vehicles from Olive Drab to Khaki Green No. 3 up until April 1944, I don't see the RAF abandoning bomb painting even if they were going almost straight from the factory to the bombers (which I doubt). I know a lot of British bombs were actually made in Canada and shipped across the Atlantic.

As I see it, that had to be a major factor. Even if you were making the bombs in the UK, I doubt the factory would know whether or not the bombs were being shipped to the nearest airfield, Italy, Africa, or India. For that reason, it was probably easiest to just paint all of them, than it was to not paint some of them and worry about whether or not some bombs were painted and some weren't, etc.

Cheers,

Logan

[PR19_Kit]

I have a heap of bombs to paint for the Soviet GB Flogfoot.  I shall paint them something other than OD, black or grey.

The only approved colour is RED Comrade!

[rickshaw]

Bombs are usually painted to provide protection from the elements, to camouflage them in transit to the airfield and while they are stacked in the airfield's bomb dump.   If you add to that, the requirement for identification colour bands, then it's just easier to paint them all one primary colour and then add the colours as required.

One colour not mentioned and one that is in general use in Western airforces is "practice blue".   You'll often seen bombs and often missiles which are painted a deepish blue colour.  This is a bomb or missile case that contains nothing except concrete, to make it weigh the same as an operational weapon.   It provides practice to the ground crews, it provides practice to the air crews.  They can be dropped in an emergency but are usually brought home from the practice mission.

Then you have "dummy" weapons - they contain all the electronics but not the explosive filling.  They are often used in mock dogfights.   They can't be fired but they can be dropped in an emergency.

Finally there is the fully-fledged weapon, equipped with fuses and explosive filling/warhead and the necessary electronics to make them work operationally.  Very dangerous to have around.

Russian bombs I note from Syrian pictures are painted a sort of light grey/sky blue.  Their missiles tend to be white.

[NARSES2]

One colour not mentioned and one that is in general use in Western airforces is "practice blue".   You'll often seen bombs and often missiles which are painted a deepish blue colour.  This is a bomb or missile case that contains nothing except concrete, to make it weigh the same as an operational weapon.   

Didn't the RAF use precision guided dummy "concrete" bombs in Iraq for bunker busting ?

RAF bombs were quite often a deepish, dull yellow in the early stages of WWII. As the war went on, and maybe because they used a lot of US made ones, they seem to have moved to O.D. /Dull dark green.

I'm currently trying to work out the colours that the projected anti-invasion gas dispensers would have been painted in 1940 ( Need to find that SAM article.) and this has led me to realise just how complicated the painting/markings of munitions is.

The British military wasn't as keen on not following regulations when it was convenient as the US seemed to be. Considering that the British Army was repainting nearly all US vehicles from Olive Drab to Khaki Green No. 3 up until April 1944, I don't see the RAF abandoning bomb painting even if they were going almost straight from the factory to the bombers (which I doubt). I know a lot of British bombs were actually made in Canada and shipped across the Atlantic.

Cheers,

Logan

Bureaucracy. "It says here in the contract", so it was followed. It is amazing how much the regulations were stuck to even during the dark days of 1940, but perhaps it was intentional and all part of the "keep calm and carry on" philosophy ?

I often wonder how long some of these munitions even in WWII were kept hanging around. Does a dumb bomb have a shelf life ?

[Steel Penguin]

The Raf used concrete paveways in Iraq,  yes, to try to limit collateral damage, they were painted in the inert blue so that if any went astray they were readily identifiable to the EoD guys afterwards, they tended to get dropped on tanks under bridges etc, when the span was still wanted.
The old WW2 stocks were slowly used but they did have a shelf life, especially if they weren't kept a a nice even temperature,  its quite a long shelf life but the filler will eventually degrade ( not bad, just less boom for your weight), what you don't want is it going sensitive ( twitch  BOOM!), its why more modern systems have shelf lifes as the thermal effects of high speed flight, and long periods on the airframe in sunny places can affect them.

[kitnut617]

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. These bomb casings only got painted 'after' the war when they were put in storage and the public only got to know about the bombs after they we de-classified. Which was in the 60's IIRC.  Interesting fact I discovered only a few years ago, after the war the Tallboy was the RAF's main weapon against capital ships --- which led to some having 'guided' technology applied to it.

[Weaver]

When I was researching for my FAA Panther, I found of pics of ex-WWII 3" RP warheads that were being used by Hunters in Aden in the 1960s. They'd been in open storage so they'd all rusted on one side, but when they were threaded onto bodies, the rusty and painted sides ended up randomly rotated, giving quite an odd look.

I've also got some pics of Danish Drakens carrying practice blue Mk.83s on a NATO exercise. They might have been a deep blue when they came from the factory, but they'd been stored outside long enough for UV to fade the colour to more of a powder blue and for them to get extravagantly red-rusted from the top, complete with streaks running down the sides.

[Weaver]

Just been flipping through Yefim Gordon's book about Soviet aircraft weapons. It doesn't have a specific section on colours, but the following can be observed/deduced.

General Colours: most missiles are substantially white, but some are silver/NMF or painted grey, or have a mixture of white and grey/sliver components.


The Russians seem to have three standards for non-live rounds:

Dummy Rounds. These are completely empty 'weapon shapes' used for display or aerodynamic carriage tests. They have no seeker windows/radomes and no engine exhausts, just a flat plate. They tend to be the same body colour(s) as the live round, but with three black bands around the middle.


Inert Rounds. These have all the same mechanical components as a live round but with no fuel or explosives. There might be other dummy components such as batteries or actuators too, to make sure they can't be converted into live rounds. These missiles would be externally indistinguishable from a live round, were it not for the colours.

There seem to be two standards for Inert Round colours:

1. Red or dark orange, either over the whole airframe or just large sections of it.

2. Live round body colour plus four or five black bands.


Acquisition Rounds. These have operational seekers and electronics, but the warhead is replaced by a data recorder, the rocket motor is inert (and sometimes has an aerodynamic nozzle cap), and they usually have no wings or control fins. Colours are the live missile body colour with three or four red bands.

[zenrat]

I have a heap of bombs to paint for the Soviet GB Flogfoot.  I shall paint them something other than OD, black or grey.

The only approved colour is RED Comrade!

Red oxide it is then.  For the dumb bombs anyway.

[scooter]

Bureaucracy. "It says here in the contract", so it was followed. It is amazing how much the regulations were stuck to even during the dark days of 1940, but perhaps it was intentional and all part of the "keep calm and carry on" philosophy ?

I can confirm the stuck regulations.  I was the technical publications librarian for my last Guard squadron, and we had a Quartermaster Corps publication from 1941!  Granted, it was for hand tools and had been updated in the years since, but still...