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Hello Here I just want to talk about late WWII aircraft. So from around 1943 and mainly German aircraft. In Japan it was analog, but because of the completely different industrial network, it should be considered separately. So Germans: Now that the painting and the color scheme are recurring themes, I want to give each of you a few basic ideas to take along. From 1943, continuous delivery from all industries across Europe began to become unreliable. This resulted in bottlenecks that had to be bridged. It doesn't matter whether it's colors, spare parts such as oars, or whatever. At the same time, new findings from the research centers and test centers were constantly emerging. The fighter pilots tried to implement these findings as quickly as possible. Sometimes there were guidelines from the RLM, sometimes it was just word of mouth. That's just such a consideration. And now imagine that you are a pilot in a fighter squadron. This is how you will try to make your aircraft the best it can be. You want to survive! That's how it is, imagine a car rally. You want to win. Because of this, you will use every opportunity available to you. Your aircraft will not always come back safely from the individual missions. There will be enough holes, scratches, or whatever. The weather will also play a powerful role. For example, a hailstorm before take-off or a flight through such a cloud. Well, on the other hand, you have pictures, photos of an aircraft. That is a point in time. Nobody can tell you what the plane looked like before or after based on that. Written and pictorial documents are rare. Very few can fall back on the stories told by operational pilots from back then. I am very suspicious of what many great new books claim to know. I have bought many expensive books myself. The only thing that's true about it are the pictures. The text for this is often quite correct, but rarely correct. Often just fictitious or well composed. You, the model maker, ask what can I orientate myself on? About pictures, photos and your own common sense. To do this, it is very important to understand the actions of the people back then in this environment. I learned a lot from stories. This is my treasure chest. I can share this with you all. The exact decision what and how is up to each of you. Example please: landing site in XY, somewhere in Europe. Well, then take a look at Google Earth to find out where that is. Look whether the basic botany there is green or brown in summer. Then you will understand for yourself whether he had a brown or green RLM from the 80s on the plane. This alone leaves many questions superfluous. The completely analogous also applies to all tank model builders. Where were the battlefields and the time of year. What were the rules and what were generally available materials. Talking smart enough. But a few small impulses to come to a coherent model. Happy modelling