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Scratchbuilt 1/144 Zeppelin. Building a WWI Q Class Zepp.


ICMF

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Hmmm... going nuts trying to decide on a gondola colour. About the only conclusion I *have* reached is that I don't think they were CDL. (sorry Thorsten)


This looks NMF to me:

L_9.jpg

(O Class, first flight 8 March 1915)


While this looks more like grey - it doesn't seem to have a metallic sheen to it:

L_24_mit_Robert_Koch.JPG

(Q Class; L24, first flight 20 May 1916)


My Zepp is L23, first flight 8 April 1916, so it's the Navy ship immediately preceding the aircraft in the second picture (there were two Army Zepps built in between), so it's likely to be more like the latter rather than the former, but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Guess it's time to flip a coin. :D

Edited by ICMF
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Your ship looks great!

Without knowing it better, what makes you think that the gondolas are not the hull colour? If you exclude a metallic finish (which can obviously be done for some ships), you end up with the fact that it has been painted. But as long as no colour photo surfaces (which will most likely not happen ;-)), I see the only hint for the colour to be "logical". So I assume the gondolas to be in the same colour than the rest of the ship. The grey-value of the colour of the gondolas on photos matches perfectly to the bright hull colour. I see no hint for the gondola colour to be different.

Of course, I don't know it, but I'd be interested in an alternative explanation.

Thorsten

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ICMF. Great job. One of my wet dreams too.

Listen on the color thing I suggest two pics, One engine nacelle from the Belgian War Museum and the secondary gondola from Le Bourget Museum Paris. They both seem painted in a gray - light blue color, only on the exterior.

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/photo/000952206.html

http://lzdream.net/dirigeables/zeppelin/ficheszep/62/moteur.jpg

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Keep in mind that these gondolas are from later ships (L 71 is an X-class ship). At some time during the war, the fabric was switched from natural brownish colours to a grey (in fact it was the same fabric colour but tiny blue strips were printed on it, resulting in a grey look from a distance). This is discussed in the Windsock Zeppelin publications.

So following the same rules as above, the grey gondolas fit to the later, grey ships.

Thorsten

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Uncoated aluminium quickly oxidizes and ends up looking like a flat grey colour at any distance. Could that be what's going on in those two photos? L9 being brand new when photographed, and the lower ship having worn a bit? Look at all the greasy handprints near the ground handling rail; that's very common on weathered aluminium.

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Your ship looks great!

Without knowing it better, what makes you think that the gondolas are not the hull colour? If you exclude a metallic finish (which can obviously be done for some ships), you end up with the fact that it has been painted. But as long as no colour photo surfaces (which will most likely not happen ;-)), I see the only hint for the colour to be "logical". So I assume the gondolas to be in the same colour than the rest of the ship. The grey-value of the colour of the gondolas on photos matches perfectly to the bright hull colour. I see no hint for the gondola colour to be different.

Of course, I don't know it, but I'd be interested in an alternative explanation.

Thorsten

It's mostly because of German painting practices in general. At the start of the war, most aircraft had cowlings and major fittings in natural metal, with clear doped linen fabric. By 1915, there was a lot more grey-painted metal, occasionally some stained fabric (Fokker monoplanes). By the time this particular Zeppelin was being built, grey, painted metal was pretty much standard, the first traces of airplane paint were appearing and planes like the Albatross C.IIIs had grey painted fabric, too.

But I have never seen any evidence that the metal was painted to match CDL fabric. On any aircraft. Before things were painted, it just didn't seem to be a concern to have things 'match', and when they did start painting aircraft, it was likely to be some other, third colour (some Eindeckers seemed to have cowlings painted to match their olive/grey-stained fabric) or in a few instances, painting fabric to match the metal. The only instance I can think of where metal parts were painted to match the fabric coverings were on night bombers, which had night lozenge hand painted onto cowlings and struts. Obviously that's a very different situation though, as it was an attempt to camouflage the planes (so, more like overpainting the gondolas on later Zeppelins with black paint),

So, entirely unique painting practices on the Zeppelins, or the simpler explanation that they probably followed typical finishing practices? The simpler explanation just seems more reasonable to me.

As for the appearance of period photos? I haven't seen any that were really conclusive, and given the geometry of (relatively) tiny gondola under massive balloon, it's kind of hard to pull definite conclusions - light and shadow can play some weird tricks, and it can be really hard to tell the difference between metal, paint and fabric some times:

albatros-c-iii_src_1.jpg

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I agree with most of what you say, but keep in mind that airships were not similar to aircraft nor were they part of the airforce. They were part of the Heer and the Marine/navy. I would be careful to apply aircraft painting standards to airships, as the background in construction, function and service is completely different.

But anyways, this is a point that noone can prove, and I think all arguments have been brought into the discussion. In the end you have to decide how you paint it, noone can prove you wrong with either grey or brown!

What seems to be true though is that the interior is blank metal except for the fabric, this can be seen on wreck pictures.

Happy modeling!

Thorsten

EDIT: sorry, I confused the structure of the Heer. Heereszeppeline were part of the Heer as were aircraft, but the airships were not part of the Fliegertruppe.

Edited by thorst
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