Me 262 / JV44 question

[fastterry]

Not adding too much to the colour debate but I remember reading that the Me262 at the Australian War Museum was very lightly sprayed with 76 on the underside sort of like a thin film. If you look at the 262 in the photo posted by Safety Dad you can make out the putty lines around the rear fuselage indicating a lighter covering by the dark green. Because there was apparently no colour cards issued for the dark green my money is on there being at least three new greens that were produced by different suppliers and were called 81.

TRF

[Werdna]

6 hours ago, David E. Brown said:

Werdna,

 

I am working on an article for Morten  Jesson and Andrew Arthy’s “Air Warfare” on Steinhoff’s Me 262 and his last flight. Hopefully it will be completed and published in the first half of 2021. 
 

Dave, thanks for the kind words!

 

Cheers,

 

David, 

 

 

 

Thanks David - look forward to reading about that..  

 

Meanwhile, I've gone for a kind of 'two greens' effect on the fuselage, which looks like it will end up as a cross between the pic S-D posted earlier and some of the profiles online.  Should be able to do an RFI in the next few days, hopefully...

[torqueofthedevil]

Sorry folks, late to the party. I can't help with the camouflage colours (so many sensible ideas put forward already, few of which we can ever prove right or wrong!). All I would say is I respectfully disagree with the suggestion that JV44 repainted its aircraft (touch-ups perhaps, but I mean major camouflage application). Apart from the practicalities of doing so, the lack of any individual marking on the aircraft in question strongly suggests to me that it arrived looking like that and didn't change. Any military unit, however desperate the situation, will try to put numbers on things, partly for traditional reasons but also to avoid tactical confusion if all the aircraft/vehicles look the same. Therefore, I surmise that if JV44 had the time and resources to apply a full camouflage job, they could also have applied a tactical number. Even if it wasn't a perfect neat marking with a contrasting outline, anything is better than nothing - as we have seen with the slightly wonky swastika on a 262 tail in this thread, plus the freehand werknummern on various Bf 109Ks etc. Of course, having one aircraft without a number doesn't matter...or even several, provided that the camouflage varies, as we all agree was the case in the Luftwaffe in the closing stages of the war. But painting all the aircraft in the same camouflage and then not adding tactical markings? That could be the case, but it doesn't sit easily with me. Knowing the situation when JV44 was in existence, I would say it is more likely that the aircraft were used in whatever state they arrived in, with little interest in (and little scope for) modification to appearance or anything else. But who can say for sure? 

[SafetyDad]

On 14/03/2021 at 11:29, torqueofthedevil said:

 I respectfully disagree with the suggestion that JV44 repainted its aircraft (touch-ups perhaps, but I mean major camouflage application). Apart from the practicalities of doing so, the lack of any individual marking on the aircraft in question strongly suggests to me that it arrived looking like that and didn't change.  I would say it is more likely that the aircraft were used in whatever state they arrived in, with little interest in (and little scope for) modification to appearance or anything else. But who can say for sure? 

 

Absolutely.  Having recently read JV44 'The Galland Circus from cover to cover I totally agree with you. In a previous post I did speculate on overpainting at unit level , but the the narrative in the Smith and Creek opus really highlights just how chaotic were the circumstances around JV44s formation and operations. Aircraft were arriving from multiple units, with pilots bringing their own with them! Even Luftwaffe High Command didn't always know the strength of this unit!

 

Interestingly, two points struck me especially after reading the book (and its camouflage and  markings notes)

• Smith and Creek state that they believe that JV44 was issued with a batch of overall green Me262s
• Overall green 262s appear to have been more common than I realised - pictures and profiles in the 4 volume Classic Me262 set show this painting scheme to have been widely employed by a number of units (including JV44). 

BTW, a fair number of the green JV44 262s did carry individual numbers. Eduard Schallmoser's 'White 5' and White 22 crashed at the end of the Munich-Reim runway  are two examples. 

 

HTH

 

SD