Turkish Fw 190 A-3a

[JBZ]

I'm looking information about camo of Fw 190 in Turkish A.F. Some sources claim that were standard LW camo RLM 74/75/76 but according to others (for example Tiger Head Decals) RLM71/02/65. In in the end od service 190 received own camo - by RAF Dark Earth/Dark Green/Azure or all green (US Olive Drab?). Every helps are welcome - eduards kits is waiting.

[Jure Miljevic]

Hello JBZ

I am not ruling out possible later repaints but a dozen or so photos of Turkish Fw 190 A-3a fighters I have seen show these aircraft in Luftwaffe camouflage. Copy Fw 190 Turk Hava Kuvvetleri into your favorite photo search engine and see it yourself, if you have not already done so. Also, I would stick with RLM 74/75/76 paints. Turkey received its new fighters between March and August 1943 and that sounds a bit late for RLM 71/02/65 scheme. Cheers

Jure

[NPL]

you could begin studying the photos ... quite a few in existence. Then the next thing would be to compare the Turkish camouflage painting to German ones to see if the Turks were following the Germans (and probably using similar colours). 

 

By the way is there any new information about this:

 

https://interestingengineering.com/50-wwii-aircraft-units-were-just-unearthed-in-turkey

Or is it only another hoax like the Burmese Spitfires. There seems t o have been almost total silence since 2016.

 

[Graham Boak]

Given that RAF aircraft in later Turkish service retained their original colours, I see little reason to argue in the face of the photographic evidence that the Turkish Fw190s didn't do the same, that is remain in their original national colours.  At least for the first few years: but how long did they remain in service in view of the complete lack of spares support?

[Sturmovik]

This link mentions the Fw 190s wore the standard post 1941 Luftwaffe camouflage:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/focke-wulf-fw-190-in-turkish-service/amp/

[NPL]

To Graham: Seems that the Americans demanded that they got rid of the 190s in the late forties, and to Sturmovik: You can find more exact information if you google 'Turkish FW190s'. They changed camouflage a year or two after WW II.

[Sturmovik]

11 minutes ago, NPL said:

Sturmovik: You can find more exact information if you google 'Turkish FW190s'. They changed camouflage a year or two after WW II.

That's also covered in the link above.

[Milos Gazdic]

Pozdrav svima! Hello

Turkish Fw 190s were always my passion for two reasons
First - Fw 190 is my favorite aircraft ever &
Second - Turkey is one of the favorite countries I lived so far in (10 so far)

Unfortunately, nobody ever wrote or researched these birds in details! And most of the texts you will find online are rewritten from site to site, from blog to modelers post...

As Mr Jure notices well these airframes were delivered mid 1943 to Turkey. By that time early war colors were outdated already! BUT By that time Fw 190 A-1s (on which Fw 190 Aa-3 frames were based on) were outdated too! By the time these airframes were getting ready for Turkey - FuG 16z started entering the production of Fw 190s for Germany. And when you look at it - Germany didn't pass to Turkey - neither Fw 190 A-3 (but old airframes update to close to that standard with the omission of the 20mm cannons on top of it all)... 

... so it leaves me wonder - would they pass over the airframes painted in their standard camouflage too? Don't forget that camo is as important secret as anything else from the equipment!

So, yes, pattern could have been same or similar to German one - but were the paints same - it remains the question until someone who really spent time digging in the archives can tell us!

One of the earlier images of Turkish Fw 190s is the one where Black 12 is in the foreground. No modification to the camouflage is visible and based on my personal opinion these machines look like painted in 02 / 71 / 65 scheme. Interesting thing with that Black 12's photo is that machine looks like NOT having inner wing armament at all! Like there is no hole in the wing root. A-2/A-3 style grills are visible on the side overpainted with black. All spinners in the photo seem to be same color and that color matches the prop color (we know props were painted RLM 70 on Fw 190s by German standards, but I wonder if they were painted maybe black for Turkey... since their spinners were black in the beginning according to rare authors writing about them). 

Özkan Türker in one of the articles also points out early war Luftwaffe camo. 

Props later received the yellow tips according to TuAF standards & also different color spinners!. Famous is the photo of "Red? 39" showing the light spinner and prop tips (yellow for both). Basically there were 4 Regiments: Akbaş, Sarıbaş, Albaş & Karabaş - and each had the spinners repainted accordingly. I never managed to find photos proving this 100%!

Another thing I failed to locate is CLEAR image showing the covers of the inner wing armament! Considering that they Machine Guns were sent to Turkey in this position & that the airframes were in fact A-1s - would it mean that these should be same as in A-1s (flat completely?) or maybe similar to those few prototypes that had very elongated blisters there? Or were they really brought to A-3's standards bottom some of Turkish modelers building TuAF Fw 190 Aa-3s show them (IMHO wrongly!) There is a photo of "Black 27" showing this area but I never found high res photo which will be clear about it! Also same photo features a very dark Fw 190 that obviously has very different camo than all the others!!!


So... we need someone to bite on this & deliver some great research about these amazing aircraft!!

Sorry for reviving the subject that was sitting still for ages!

Regards from Shanghai!
Miško

PS Oh! Yes! British colors could have been easily used later on! Apparently Turkey had quite a bit of those in stock! 

Edited November 4, 2019 by Milos Gazdic
forgot a detail about the RAF colors