Bodhi,
The doubleish-negative in your last paragraph of the first post threw me. Are you saying that taped gunports would have been a feature found in combat birds ONLY?
Regarding color, are you in agreement that she's probably sporting a tricolor scheme, and that the non-specular sea blue upper surfaces have faded to be very close to the int. blue flanks? Are you aware of any USN/MC 1A/C/D Corsairs that painted the undersides light, but were NOT tricolor?
Saxman,
Regarding the taped ports:
My poor grammar aside, I was saying that the U Birds I have seen that were training birds did not have taped gun ports. I am not sure if that applies to all of them or not, just on what I have seen. It seemed to be more of a concern of individual crews to get one more advantage of removing the turbulence caused by the ports, and keeping their guns clean, so if not fired, they did not have to be removed and the bore cleaned.
Regarding Color:
Yes, I am in agreement with you that that is probably what happened. BUT, I have seen photos of SNJ's in what appeared to be a two tone scheme, so who knows for sure. Maybe they just faded too. One thing is for certain, the sun in the southern latitudes would have blanched most everything exposed to it.
