Re: First Ever Official RPF Group Build Sign-Up Thread - all experience levels wanted
Based on what I've seen in the photos, it looks very flat to me. I doubt it was gloss, but even if it was, at best I would go semi-gloss with it as the environment of 1940s Muroc dry lake probably wasn't too kind to glossy paint jobs when the sand went blowing around. Most every model I've seen done of the plane has been in flat colors.
As for International Orange, it is too red in hue for the Glennis. Given how red/orange it looks, I have a feeling this is the shade that was selected for the plane late in its career when it got the white spine. But it is too red in shade for the X-1 for its Mach 1 flight. I tried to find a history of International Orange to see when the shade was so named and couldn't find a specific date. But, apparently the Golden Gate Bridge is painted that color (it probably wasn't called that color though until well after WW2).
As for Yeager, the costume worn by the Sam Shepard in "The Right Stuff" was pretty close to what Yeager wore and probably exact since Yeager was a technical advisor and Phillip Kaufmann (the director) was obsessive about visual details like that (the story was something else though). He was wearing a brown leather flight jacket and I believe US Army Air Corps style uniform brown pants or a one piece flight suit, still common for that period (the USAF became its own department about a month before the Mach 1 flight). I don't believe he had a parachute on (not that he could have bailed out anyway). An oxygen mask covered his lower face and goggles covered his eyes (probably P-51 based). The movie showed him wearing what looked like a 1930s football helmet, but black and white period footage from a few months after his flight showed him wearing a gold jet pilot helmet when he reenacted his flight for the news reel cameras. BTW, a small screen version of that news reel footage can be found here (not sure when the dialog was done though as it implies the footage was filmed after the plane was selected to go to the Smithsonian):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Yeager
The altitude flown on the Mach 1 run wasn't high enough to require a pressure suit (35,000 feet). Later on when the experimental jets were doing altitude as well as speed runs, the pilots were wearing partial pressure suits (what Sam Shepard had on for Yeager's out of control at Mach 2 flight in "The Right Stuff" is what they typically wore). Full pressure suits like what astronauts wore typically didn't come about until 1957-58. The US Navy I believe was the first agency to use them and I believe the first X plane to use them at Edwards was the X-15.
The Revell 1/32 X-1 kit has a pilot figure styled like Yeager from "The Right Stuff" so it could be used as a 3D reference for doing one in 1/18 scale. I understand Ultimate Soldier has done a 1/18 (i.e. 3 3/4" action figure scale) P-51 pilot figure, so that could be used as a basis to make an X-1 pilot in this scale. Of course, if one can't find one of those, you could always get an action figure of the same size and customize it with some two part epoxy putty for the details.