Well I belive there are several answers to this,

1. Planes painted in dull colours weathet much faster than gloss paint.
Therefor owners may choose to use glosse paint in an otherwise faithfull
replication of a paint scheme. Easy enough for me to accept.
2. Gloss "Natural Metal Finish", I do belive that some of thes are honest
errors, seeing post war racers with putty and paint removed from the wings,
and polished to reduce friction, this gives the shiny look. Also the finish
in many owners eyes probably looks good and are easy to maintain.


--
Claus Gustafsen
Strandby

"Dennis" skrev i meddelelsen
.12...
Hi all,

I have been wondering about this for a long time.

Why are warbirds, which originally had a matt or dull paintjob (almost)
always very shiny when restored??

A lot of money and effort is put in to restore it to original and flying
condition and then they put on a non original gloss finish!
I can probably understand this for flying examples, glossy is easier to
keep clean,

But, I was watching a program on Discovery about breaking the sound
barier.
And the original Bell X-1 was a matt orange and is now exhibited repainted
in a high gloss, though it will (probably) never fly again.

Any one?

TIA and cheers,

Dennis