Let me add my .02 about the plane sitting just to the right of "Willit Run" in the WWII Gallery, their Bf 109G-6. At the time the Silver Hill team restored it, the true identity of that aircraft was indeed a mystery- they knew it was a captured G-6 brought over for testing, but didn't know which one as all the normal dataplates had been souvenired off of it. So, they picked a representative scheme from a photo, selecting an aircraft whose configuration matched that of the 109 in the collection (G-6, short antenna mast, D/F loop fitted, FuG 25 fitted)... they selected "white 2" of 7./JG 27.
Well, it turns out someone DID eventually track down the identity of that aircraft, and it's actually a rather famous bird... it's WNr 160756, formerly "yellow 4" of 3./JG 4, piloted by French defector Uffz. Rene Darbois who flew the aircraft to a British field in Italy on 25 July 1944. I had the good fortune to get full run of the aircraft back in early 2006 courtesy my friend the late Tom Dietz, who was the curator of the German aircraft collection at the time, and I was rather dismayed to see that the paint was peeling off in sheets from the uppersurface of the starboard stabilizer, and other wear was clearly evident elsewhere. I spoke with him about repainting it in Darbois' markings (no small undertaking, as I./JG 4 used a lot of locally mixed and Italian paints to camouflage their aircraft to match the arid Italian landscape), and his response was that he'd be all for it but they were having enough issues with funding trying to keep the lights on, let alone repainting aircraft which were already on site.
I don't know who succeeded Tom after his untimely passing, so I don't know how familiar they are with the history of this bird or if they'd be willing to revisit the scheme, but there was at least one guy in a position of responsibility in the NASM who was willing to put that aircraft back in it's original markings. And frankly, I think that's probably true of most of NASM management at this point, given how hard they worked to put their Fw 190 back into it's service markings, as well as the Gekko, Seiran and so forth, but I can't say that with absolute certainty.
All I know is, if they DO repaint the Mustang and they don't want to put it into the markings it originally wore, I want to see it in a 359th scheme.
Lynn
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) and that certainly makes it easier to select a paint scheme that is generic. My point, if I had one, is that many of those machines carried individualized names like "Lope's Hope." Omitting it turns an individualized machine into an anonymous one, which is consistent with the museum's mission but inconsistent with strict accuracy. The P-51 provides a better example of what I am talking about. Imagine that the museum was so concerned with not singling out one individual that it painted the yellow and black group markings and serial on the airplane, but left off the unit and individual letter codes as well as all name/nose art. That would avoid the problem that has now emerged, where research both identifies the individual involved and shows the scheme to be inaccurate, but the P-51 with no codes and name would look nothing like a real 8th AF P-51! So whether you can do a truly representative airplane without incidentally singling out an individual depends on the aircraft allocation and marking practices that prevailed in the combat theatre in which you have decided to mark the airplane. This is just a taste of the process that the museum goes through in picking its Cat III aircraft paint schemes, which also includes goals of representing different camo/marking schemes on the various airplanes and distributing them among different combat theatres. Perhaps it all seems needlessly complex compared to a simpler rule like "Just pick a hero and honor him," but the NASM takes seriously its mission to make the collection as a whole reflect the big picture of WWII aviation.
