Camouflage on German aircraft post 1941

[dov]

Hallo you all

 

See this drawings!

 

 

 

 

I would like to discuss with you the camouflage on German aircraft. Specially after 1941 to 1945.

This time, the aircrafts had the cockpit painted in RLM 66.

The camouflage on the outer surfaces, wings and fuselage and rudders should be in our focus.

I found some drawings about the 109 G version.

Without date. The same for the 262 even without date. What is interesting:

The edges of the color of the wing between RLM 75 and 74 (valid for the RLM 80 range too) should have a 100mm zigzag pattern.

That means, there is no straight exact line at all. Lacerated and zigzag. In a scale of 1/48 it means a 2mm width.

First question: Are you aware of this?

Second question, if yes, how do you achieve a proper result?

 

Next theme:

Stenciling on a aircraft with operational camouflage. I do not see on photos aircrafts like this a proper stenciling pattern.

Most stencils are omitted. Exception fuel markings and electric markings.

Well, I would like to know your findings and your handling with this matter.

 

Happy modelling

[Vesa Jussila]

This is somehow visible in some photos. This is from Finland and you need to look carefully. Its there.

 

Edited February 12, 2021 by Vesa Jussila

[ckw]

That is interesting and surprising ... never come across this before. Out of curiosity I carefully tore a post-it note and I'd say the ragged edge might be useable as a mask in 1/48th. But I work in 1/72, so I'm wondering if thin blue tack masking would be a better representation than hard lines?

 

 

Colin

 

[FatFlyHalf]

I am a brush painter and work in 1/72.

I find using an unloaded short-bristled brush and a gentle stipple almost but not quite along the edges of the greys (usuallly grey on smaller aircraft) the effect is achievable without looking too blurred.  It just softens the edges a little. 

 

I cannot help you spray painters other than to suggest the same thing should work on newly sprayed paint, but as I have not tried it I really do not know if it would work. 

I'm guessing.

FFH

[FalkeEins]

sawtooth pattern on the wings of Bartel's 'red 13' 

 

 

Academy 72nd Gustav - 'sawtooth' pattern was freehand. I was more concerned to find out whether the wingtips were white at the time..

 

 

[michael_hase]

Very interesting! I did not know about this drawing before.

 

I linked your post to our German "Modellboard" and asked if any of our specialists there might be able to give more background info. The Finnish G-6 shows the standard pattern for the fuselage of that time which has no connection to the two details "D" and "E" you have shown. According the aforementioned drawings all layers of RLM 74 and 75  of a "109" at least should be painted with "ragged" edges of up to some 100mm width. In 1/72 this would be appr. 1.3 - 1.4 mm and would clearly be visible on every model. Honestly I never have seen this before neither on an original aircraft nor on models. Do we have to re-write the "book"?

 

Let´s hope to get interesting and historically well funded replies!

 

Cheers

 

Michael

 

[Graham Boak]

There are several photos showing a "sawtooth" pattern on the wings of Bf.109s, mainly recce aircraft it seems, but the pattern is more a matter of long narrow peaks rather than this pyramid pattern.  However, let's not jump to too much of a conclusion based on one single drawing.  It is already known that there were several different patterns on the wings of Bf.109s, and many photos showing either straight "splinter" lines or softer wavier lines.  One more option is not overly surprising in itself: that there are no photos in which this has been noted is also not overly surprising.  However it is quite clear that it was at the most just one more option, if adopted at all, and the majority of these fighters did not display such a pattern.

[Werdna]

You say you 'found some drawings' - can you be a bit more specific?  What is the origin or source of the drawings?  They appear to be in some kind of book..

[dov]

Hallo

This is not to mix up with sawtooth or Tannenbaum camouflage. It is on all 'straight' edges on outer surfaces you have a tiny sawtooth with an amplitude of 100m in reality. This is the point!

To use masks with straight edges for this purpose is concerning to the drawing from the manufacturer never real! This would cause a hard precise edge.

The separating line of top and bottom camouflage is also shown. 3rd picture, to look at please! Look at the right hand side of Punkt E and it shows you, that the separating line is on the upper side of the wing profile!

It causes a good defilade for a 12 o’clock attack!

Happy modelling

[Graham Boak]

This is not a tiny sawtooth - 100mm is the same difference as between a Hurricane Mk.I and a Hurricane Mk.II, all seen ahead of the wing.  This would indeed be visible.  It is possible that this drawing is intended to show the permitted tolerance on the straight demarcation line shown, and that a such a precise geometric shape was not actually intended.  I'd have thought that there were better ways of showing this, but don't know German practice in this matter.  Painting the entire aircraft in this manner would be an unreal expectation because of the increased manhours to achieve it.

[Werdna]

10 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

Painting the entire aircraft in this manner would be an unreal expectation because of the increased manhours to achieve it.

 

Not to mention the likely limited practical effect it would have on disrupting the aircraft's visibility/profile..

 

@dov - did you see my earlier question.  Where are these drawings from?

[Antti_K]

Hello guys,

 

I have this book published in 1979.

 

It gives a selection of different paint schemes for bf-109F - bf-109K. One of the examples is showing a "saw-tooth" or "Tannenbaum" colour demarcation lines. Or is it the same Dov originally posted?

 

 

The zig-zag pattern can't be much more wider than 100 mm.

 

The book also has some post-war photos of a bf-109G6-U2 in it showing the stencils. This particular plane is interesting as it had its Starboard wing lower surface painted with "light blue" and Port with (possibly) RLM 02.

 

And all paint schemes

 

Cheers,

Antti

[dov]

Not to mix up the camouflage fir tree with the normal patterns. Only this normal patterns I am mentioning.

Werdna, I have overseen your question. It is from a book which is a serious one from before 2000, which describes the F to K version.

If you look carefully at original photos, so you can see the overspray or zigzag pattern as demarcation line.

Happy modelling

[Werdna]

44 minutes ago, dov said:

Werdna, I have overseen your question. It is from a book which is a serious one from before 2000, which describes the F to K version.

 

Hi Dov - that doesn't really answer my question unfortunately.  I was hoping for a bit more detail (like the author, publisher, etc), rather than just 'a book'.  I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just asking for a bit more detail.

[michael_hase]

Gentlemen,

 

this is more an historic topic I am afraid and we do not know too much yet. Please forgive my mistakes/faults with the language but I hope I will be able to work out the point of this thread concerning the historical facts.

 

Firstly , as mentioned previously, please don´t mix the completely different official saw-tooth pattern for 109s with the question arising from the drawing colleague dov from Austria kindly presented to us. In this drawing the demarcation lines of this shown camouflage between the two colours RLM 74 and RLM 75 scheme were supposed to be painted with a somewhat frayed painting which might have covered around 100mm of "overspray". Thus not a soft edge oder hard edge of the whole camouflage demarcation pattern as seen on many Britsh aircraft of that time but a definitely frayed/ragged view within this standard camouflage pattern. This should be seen even on older contemporary pictures as Graham noticed correctly.

 

Older books unfortunately are not always that helpful as more recent researches discovered many new views and info. Older aircraft - as long as they were and still are in original condition - may be a little proof for the one or other assumption but not seen as proof or fact in general. Sometimes it was discovered that the plane - for ages been regarded as "original" - was more or less skillful "refurbished" in the 60ies or 70ies without valuable documentation of what was done with and to the respective aircraft. 

 

Also, please do not argue with "there were a lot of variations and everything available was taken". Definitrely not. There were very strict and stringent orders by RLM for the manufacturers until the end of the war also concerning paints and paint schemes. This resulted from the tight time schedule for manufacturing the aircraft etc.  Each new aircraft was to be tested, inspected and accepted by the RLM through their representatives. This was done until the end. 

Yes, there were some more diversions from these schemes towards the last months of the war however these were mainly due to the different sub-contractors for special parts. These mainly were wooden parts which required other paints than those used on the metal frames.  And sometimes there was repainting at the different units, too. But here we have an official drawing with a certain patern for demarcation lines between RLM 74 and 75.

 

You clearly can distinguish a new MTT-Regensburg made 109 G/K from one made by Wiener-Neustadt (WNF) or Erla. Basis for these weres the RLM-orders, however there were differences with - mostly -the fuselage panting (pattern and blotches).   This nowadays is accepted as fact. I happen to know Mr. Kiroff who owns the RLM-archive and also works as advisor for many museums and paint manufacturers for model paints. He owns a company doing these original RLM-paints for museums etc.  We discussed this topic pretty frequently and always enrage - with regard to standard camoufalges - hearing or reading the sentence : "they took every paint available" This is nonsense but unfortunately not to be extinguished from the books until today.

 

In our case there is this RLM or manufacturer´s drawing of which we do not know much or anything about. At first we should work out when this was issued, which RLM-number (DV...) and if this only was preliminary or in fact an order which had to be executed by the manufacturers, e.g. MTT, Wiener Neustadt, Erla and their subdivisions and subcontractors. And then - with regard to the work involved with this pattern and the deteriorating situation and desperate need for aircarft in 1944/45 - if this already was to be done on the aircraft. There are a lot of orders idling around which had been reversed or stooped immediately after their issue which makes things not easier at all. And many infos/orders are simply gone and were destroyed towards the and and after the war.

 

I hope to get some more info from our German historians to be able to add some more info.

 

Cheers and happy modelling

 

Michael

 

 

 

 

[michael_hase]

A colleague of mine posted this a year ago:

 

https://www.modellboard.net/index.php?topic=63943.0

 

Obviously these ar Messerschmitt-drawings for the 109 G according to the captions

 

I asked him to send me the ipg of picture 20 and 21 enlarged via mail. Hopefully he will do so.

 

If you have a look at the drawings the camouflage for the fuselage (20.jpg) also is interesting. The caption says that that there should be a soft demarcation line of 5cm between the camouflage colours on the fuselage.

 

Cheers

 

Michael

[ckw]

40 minutes ago, michael_hase said:

Obviously these ar Messerschmitt-drawings for the 109 G according to the captions

Lets accept that for now, but still

 

1 - were these drawings actually used in practice - or did the painters say "stuff that, too complicated" ... or perhaps this was a proposal that was not in fact adopted.

2 - if they are genuine, and were used, is the zig zag edges peculiar to Messerchmitt? Just the 109? Or was it more widely used across the industry

 

To my mind given the amount of research that's been done into Luftwaffe paint schemes the fact the this has only recently come to light seems strange. I think in this case context is everything - exactly where did the drawings originate and what was their purpose? After all there are plenty of official plans for aircraft that never got past the drawing board .

 

Cheers

 

Colin

 

 

 

 

[dov]

Hallo

Here are some examples! Take a look and a grasp!

About 10 years ago I was active on this matter. I used Gunze H colors.

These colors caused problems with masking and distancing of masking.

So I did not proceed any farther.

Today with Gunze C colors I can handle any masking easily without any distortion of the sprayed surface. Now we go!

 

Now I checked hundreds of original old photos of (Me) Bf-109 F/G/K and Fw-190 A. From literature the Me-262 is also mentioned.

On most of the wings you see the faded outline with zigzag or overspray in the amount of 100mm.

 

All the a/c restored and from museums too met this specification. On all restored a/c from this types I found the same.

No matter if it was in Wiener Neustadt, Krakau, Duxford Airshow or anything else. The Fw-190 in Imperial war museum and the Fw-190 S from Hendon had this pattern.

All a/c!

 

This matter is no new one.

 

I just read it and compared it with all the a/c I photographed all over. No story, no tale. A fact!

 

Dear modeler, I will find a way ta achieve it for all my future models. Nice goal. Maybe you join in and we find together a proper way!

 

Happy modelling

 

P.S. All Spitfires I photographed in Duxford over mopre than a decade also have this faded outline!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rolls-Royce]

My humble guess is that the pattern shown on dov's drawing was the artist's attempt to portray an irregular 4" overlap between two colors without having the ability to accurately reproduce it on the drawing. How would you show it otherwise?

Edited February 12, 2021 by Rolls-Royce

[Super Aereo]

The Zig-Zag fading was standard for fighter camouflages, as far as I know (see, for example, the painting plans for the Hungarian Me 210 Ca) - the pronounced sawtooth "Tannenbaum" pattern was typical of Erla, arguably a possible mis-interpretation of said zi-zag fading instruction...

Edited February 12, 2021 by Super Aereo

[malpaso]

I'm not sure the photo of Buchon Yellow 10 adds much to this discussion whatsoever as it's supposed to be restoration to match the dodgy 1960s movie paint job (presumably by the film art department on a Spanish airfield)!🤣

[Duncan B]

16 hours ago, Rolls-Royce said:

My humble guess is that the pattern shown on dov's drawing was the artist's attempt to portray an irregular 4" overlap between two colors without having the ability to accurately reproduce it on the drawing. How would you show it otherwise?

This is a very good point.

 

Using an industrial airbrush in a zig zag manner back and forth by 100mm as one moves would most likely create a soft edge demarcation rather than a tightly defined 100mm zig zag in the paint finish as these guys wouldn't have been using the tight nozzles us modellers use. Imagine using a DeVilbiss paint gun and flicking your wrist back and forth as you go, that would give you the 100mm but it wouldn't result in a hard edged zig zag. You would only get that if you masked the area off first, does the drawing mention using a mask?

 

Duncan B

[dov]

The German original text says allmählich verlaufend, in English gradually blending or gradual.

This says that the contour should not be abrupt.

Is this good enough explained?

The restored a/c shows you quite well, how it should look like. Never thought that they are so precisely restored.

Happy modelling

[Icedtea]

On 2/12/2021 at 6:39 PM, dov said:

Hallo you all

 

See this drawings!

 

 

 

 

Are these drawings contemporary ? factory dwgs? RLM guides? 

 

[grgattermeyer]

My Deutsch isn’t crisp enough to read the drawing, but is it possible details D & E are simply pointing out the allowable overspray/zigzag rather than mandating it?