In the 50s and 60s, most aircraft (military and civilian) were painted with a shining silvery color. Now, military ones are often painted a non-shiny non-silvery gray and civilian ones all kinds of colors.

Was this a fashion thing or was there a specific reason they were painted silver (which seems to be inadequate for military planes, as they don't really want to be seen

F/A-18 Superhornet or any US Navy planes have a silvery color

They are silver-grey, but not shiny and reflective like the planes in the 50s. I can only speculate on the reason why they were shiny at first, perhaps to appear bigger and more aggressive.

probably because shiny aircraft are soooo 50s/60s.

Camouflage - gray is a lot harder to spot against cloud cover than totally reflective bare metal.

Many of the dark colours are radar absorbent

Originally Posted by Fox

F/A-18 Superhornet or any US Navy planes have a silvery color

Yeh, but as Marinehordes said, not as shiny. Also, a lot of planes are also green, or have desert camo.

Originally Posted by Easy-8

probably because shiny aircraft are soooo 50s/60s.

Totally.

Originally Posted by c/Commander

Camouflage - gray is a lot harder to spot against cloud cover than totally reflective bare metal.

Exactly. Did they not realize that back then?

As C/O commander stated its for camoflage.

I think the reason is that there have been several different schools of thought over the decades of which colors and which patterns provide the best cover. If you look at WWII camo patterns changed constantly...

I like the Hind's camo, light grey/blue on the bottom and desert camo on the sides, makes perfect sense in Afghanistan.

Originally Posted by Mohmar Deathstrike

Exactly. Did they not realize that back then?

Like mmarsh said, camo changed a lot over World War II. By the end of the war, actually, the Allies had stopped bothering to even camoflage their planes, which is why you see those nice silvery P-51s and B-29s - they didn't really need to anymore since they were making so many so fast and there was little air threat from the Axis.

I guess in the '50s they just kept doing what they had been since the mid '40s.