I like planes. And I noticed something quite interesting: It seems that many planes that were built/designed during the CCCP era had quite similar interiors on the flight decks. The panels seem to be almost universally painted with a green-blu-ish colour, and they seem to always have a small ventilator hanging from the ceiling. Is there a reason for that? Or the soviets just really liked that horrific colour? I mean, some of their planes are just amazing. There is that saying that goes “you should not show a brick to Russian pilots, because they will try to fly it”. This pretty much explains how they can fly this beast. or maybe that one. (who seems to don’t have a ventilator). (Also, notice that Soviets were so tough that they didn’t need any silly protections around the ventilators).
The same blue enamel also appearsvon control panels at power stations and on hospital equipment. I guess it’s a bit like the way cast iron items were often painted bright red, and steam engines were often green or black.
A shiny paint helps the interior lighting reflect around .
Also, green helps the warning lights stand out… it doesn’t much matter if you don’t see a green light…
Another theory is that they were just copying USA.
I think I recall reading—maybe from Viktor Belenko’s account—that the blue-green color was supposed to be psychologically calming, to reduce pilot stress. A quick Google search kicks up quite a few anecdotal reports saying the same thing, but no prime sources that I immediately see. It could be misinformation, or a (possibly even Soviet) urban legend.
Hell, maybe Vasily who managed the blue-green paint factory just used his blat to land the cockpit paint deal.
According to this page the colour is “PF-36m matt light grey-blue” Apparently used for cockpits and ‘overall’ surfaces since 1947. Scroll past all the aviation porn to the tables at the bottom.
May simply have been convention, but note that according to the same page there was quite a variation in cockpit colours up to that time.
The Soviets don’t seem to have paid much attention to pilot comfort, so I doubt they paid much attention to pilot stress. My WAG is that they tried to retain design commonality to reduce the amount of training required for pilots to be trained on a new type.
And Stalin said they had to copy it exactly, down to a pinprick in the wing and the color of the dashboard. Just be glad the prototype didn’t have fuzzy dice hanging from the ventilators.
They didn’t have dedicated aircraft carriers of the sort the US Navy operates, or even the smaller types the US Marine Corps and most NATO navies operate. Instead they had “aircraft carrier cruisers” which were basically half carrier, half guided missile platform. They still have one in service; the rest were sold to India and China.
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