why did or didn't some aluminum aircraft get paint VS bare finish?

Actually, I've seen this same figure, related to modern passenger aircraft.

 

I'd like to see that analysis. Lets see, people weighing 10 lbs more than a couple of decades ago, 300 on a 747,=3000 lbs more per load, times a million per pound = 3 billion more over the life of the plane, even QANTAS has over 100 airliners so $300 billion more over the life of their fleet. And their annual revenue is just $15 billion. No wonder they can't show a profit.

 

In fact this issue is being addressed with airlines charging more for over weight passengers. Some truly obese are charged for two seats. It would only take Quantas 20 years to amortize those costs, which is shorter then the life span of most passenger jets. The reverse is also true, where as the children and little women passengers require less fuel, offsetting to a degree, though paying the same fare.

 

Yep, a Samoan airline is going to charge per kg, anyone under 100 kg there is classed as anorexic.

 

Consider this, in recent years Australian consumers have the opportunity to buy fresh cherries flown in from California and Washington state, in our winter, the local season is of a month or two around Christmas. This imported fruit is generally of better quality than what we see from local sources, but typically $5 to $10 per kilo dearer. Let's say they charged $10 a kilo for air freight. Those planes could make tens of thousands of such trans-pacific flights, and still would be nowhere near the million $ a pound cost of flying an extra pound around.

 

Dont know about berries, but I did read somewhere that a typical commercial aircraft has 250kgs of paint on it. That would be two passengers plus gear for the lifecycle of the plane.

 

When I was a kid, washing my dad's Cessna 195 was worth 5 mph. A wax job, using automotive paste wax, was worth another 5 mph.

 

Gents,

Even military fighters chase the weight issue due to range and therefore gas consumption as a part of performance evaluations.
The last weight reduction I participated in allowed $250K/# reduced for the engineering/ manufacturing cost due to the benefits of weight reduction.
And that is on an aircraft that is based on pure performance - not payback. Fighters are just a sink hole for money - unless you need them.

 

I just had(and still have) bit of hard time imagining any "military minds" going "screw it, forget the regulation paint job, send 'em out stark naked!"

Be like them telling troops "wear what you want, as long as you have a patch that says "U.S." to make it a legal uniform".

I've done construction with ex-military types and they seemed to think it pretty important everything paintable the company owned was properly painted "just because".

Then again, traditionally it take the USA a few years to get 'forward thinking' types into command once a war starts.


Good info from PAR about carrier based and corrosion.


I'd always thought after a certain speed maybe a coat of some sort of paint might fill in minor imperfections like bondo and become 'worth it' weight wise, especially on bigger planes were volume/surface area becomes a factor.

 

I believe the 'growth factor' for aircraft is over 6 to 1, so that "one pound" is really something way over 6lbs like maybe 20lbs or more.

Still seems high, maybe they were just saying that as "management" to get you guys hot looking for weight savings.

 

You mean like this:

instead of this?



Or this:

vs this?


If you like 'em big and naked, here you go:

 

I have some money I would like to lend at your interest rate ....

 

If I had never read hundreds of military history books, and flown myself, I might agree with some of your sentiment.

 

Only American made bombers and fighter planes were not painted all over but not all the time and everywhere. It was both a practical and a style thing. The US were producing aircraft for various countries but also like fortresses were even meant to shine...
In Europe the US air force started to paint their P's around D Day which tells a lot about camouflage reasoning. Brits were flying night ops and so had to paint their air planes and they have created a tradition of camouflage and recognition schemes. Poles had the British paint jobs on their British made aircraft except for their white and red checkers and code letters but their P-51-s had had silver and sand paint jobs for one example but also fully painted in grey and green or some such.
And so painting or none was a matter of style and decisions and not of applied physics.