Aircraft look like....

[dov]

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

 

[Graham Boak]

Surely the decision for a green or brown RLM colour, if that was ever a simple choice for anyone, would have been made at the factory, depending upon their supplies?  It certainly wouldn't be based on a particular landing site, which at this stage would often change, on perhaps a week by week basis. 

[Icedtea]

Over thinking things. I doubt any pilots in the last 12 mths gave much if any thought to what colour the particular aircraft they flew that day was painted while they were being strafed and harassed.  They seemed to change fields on an almost daily basis and a dispersed manufacture meant that components in all manner of colours were hurriedly assembled in forest clearings, railway cuttings and tunnels. ...evidence Fw190 D9's in pale grey/dark grey or green wings with part painted green and brown fuselages with mismatched power 'eggs' and  fins.

[wellsprop]

I'm struggling to find the references... 

 

However, the actual colour doesn't really (within reason) matter. The main point of camoflage is to break up the shape of the aircraft. 

 

Whether the camoflauge is brown/green or a slightly different brown/green, geometric or mottled, is mostly irrelevant.

[Werdna]

From reading the above, the proposition would appear to be that late war luftwaffe a/c were painted - and presumably continually re-painted - in order to reflect the prevailing conditions of whatever location there were in. 

 

Given the situation in late war Germany at the time, I can't help feeling that is slightly preposterous.  On the other hand, I may have misunderstood, in which case I'm happy to be corrected.

[wellsprop]

I can't imagine any situation in which the Luftwaffe has the resources to repaint their aircraft to match the conditions after 1943.

 

Aircraft that served on the Eastern Front got a whitewash, but towards the end of 1944, Germany industry was unable to even paint (or make for that matter!) all its vehicles properly when they left the factory. 

 

Im aware for ground vehicles, it was left up to local units to camoflauge their vehicles appropriately - I am unaware if this applied to aircraft. Although, as mentioned, by 1944, the colour of an aircraft wasn't really the issue the Luftwaffe had.

 

However, one thing dov does point out is that Luftwaffe aircraft weren't painted the same in the late war. With German industry and the Luftwaffe collapsing, this was perhaps inevitable.

[Graham Boak]

The 80 series of colours were even not introduced until 1944, yet were widely seen on production aircraft, so I wouldn't read too much into the conditions of 1943.  The conditions of late 1944 and early 1945 have been pretty widely discussed: it is clear that the factories were still receiving considerable supplies of paint until very late in the war, even if they were erratic in their distribution and considerable economies were demanded - witness the use of bare metal on the aft part of the wing undersides of Fw.190s.  So there certainly were problems, but until the final weeks work-arounds still existed and it was rare for the Allies to find unpainted aircraft other than still on the production line.

[Work In Progress]

 

On 1/31/2021 at 12:30 PM, dov said:

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.

Nope. As a pilot in a fighter squadron you won't really get involved in the decision-making on the general appearance of the aircraft at all, with the exception of the occasional vanity marking. If you have any surplus energy you are able to put into an individual aircraft (and if you are sufficiently senior to get any say in which of the unit's serviceable aircraft you fly) then you put it into things like:

- cleanliness of the airframe, getting any bugs and clods of mud off it

- cleanliness and clarity of the canopy, and practicing your bailout routine

- intense daily inspection of the aircraft for defects that could kill you, like leaks, cuts in tyres or nicks in prop blades

Edited February 1, 2021 by Work In Progress