Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 brown and green camouflage

[TheKinksFan]

I find the B-scheme in the re-issue of Italeri's Sparviero interesting. Does any of you Regia Aeronautica experts, @Giorgio N mainly, have any information on this aircraft, or this type of scheme, if there's evidence that it even existed?

 

https://www.italeri.com/uploads/products/qtPJSPpMXeqeH9oUNgeHARzC6bpS03HAwxBFUYEB.jpeg

[GiampieroSilvestri]

I have never seen a Regia aeronautica Savoia Marchetti S79 in verde mimetico allover with splotches of bruno mimetico.Apart schema C3 reticolo di macchie rade verde mimetico over verde mimetico 2 or 3,schema C3b of the same colours but with smaller splotches and schema C5 verde mimetico with splotches of giallo mimetico all other Regia aeronautica Savoia Marchetti S79 paint schemes were with three colours and always marrone mimetico not bruno mimetico.The pre war camouflage schemes were also in three colours of giallo mimetico 3,verde mimetico 1 and marrone mimetico 2.

 

Saluti

 

Giampiero

Edited November 23, 2023 by GiampieroSilvestri

[dogsbody]

You could ask here: https://stormomagazine.com/phpbb2/index.php?sid=3e1eb1a0dcb24bbf3898f375320763f2

 

Or look here: https://stormomagazine.com/

 

 

 

 

Chris

[warhawk]

On 11/23/2023 at 9:21 PM, dogsbody said:

Or look here: https://stormomagazine.com/

 

More precisely, here: https://www.stormomagazine.com/RegiaAeronauticaColorsinWWII_3a.htm

 

Nor Verde Mimetico 2, nor Bruno Mimetico were used by the SIAI factory, so this might have been a field paint-job with what was found at hand.

[TheKinksFan]

10 minutes ago, warhawk said:

Nor Verde Mimetico 2, nor Bruno Mimetico were used by the SIAI factory, so this might have been a field paint-job with what was found at hand.

I believe Italeri's colour call outs are influenced by what paints they have in their range, they have something labelled as Verde Mimetico 2, but no other Verdes.

I found this on the Vitocharts section:

"Summarizing, from the beginning of the conflict, factories used the following colors: SIAI: green (14) and dark brown (22) or (28)"

 

14 is Verde Mimetico Chiaro (CMPR equivalent Verde Mimetico 1), 22 is Colore 10 Bruno Chiaro in Variante (CMPR Marrone Mim. 53193) and 28 is Colore 10 Bruno (SIAI) (CMPR Marrone Mim. 2)

 

There are not many SM.79 colour photos that, at least to my knowledge, so if a black & white photo shows a Sparviero that seems to be in two colours, it's always an interpretation or a guess what those colours are.

 

 Sparviero with brown background would be something different on the shelf, instead of Giallo Mimetico.

[Giorgio N]

I've searched for pictures of this aircraft and haven't found them yet. However I did find a picture of a formation of aircraft from this same unit (with 60-9 in the foreground) and this kind of confirmed what I initially suspected...

The "standard" 3-colour scheme was far from standardised in the pattern and density of the areas in the various colours, as shown by the many patterns identified by the CMPR researchers when they wrote the book from which the table in the Stormo website is taken.

Some of these patterns actually used quite dense spots of brown and green over the base yellow. Add that in B/W pictures, particularly when the quality isn't great as in many of WW2 Italian aircraft, the green and brown are often hard to tell apart and it's easy to see how some schemes may be interpreted as in 2 colours instead of the prescribed 3. That is what I think of the picture I have seen of 60-9: the pattern is very dense and can lead to think of a 2-colour scheme where the base colour is darker than the usual yellow.

There has been quite a lot of discussion among Italian modellers on the existence of a number of 2-colour schemes using the "serie mimetica" colours in the past. In the end all of these were proven to be bad interpretations of a 3 colour scheme. I suspect this may be the case here.

Said that, there were aircraft with what looked like a 2 colour scheme as some units repainted the upper surfaces with a single colour, leaving spots in the original scheme. This occurred particularly in the desert with the addition of a coat in one of the camo yellows, however it also happened with green,

[TheKinksFan]

21 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

Some of these patterns actually used quite dense spots of brown and green over the base yellow. Add that in B/W pictures, particularly when the quality isn't great as in many of WW2 Italian aircraft, the green and brown are often hard to tell apart and it's easy to see how some schemes may be interpreted as in 2 colours instead of the prescribed 3. That is what I think of the picture I have seen of 60-9: the pattern is very dense and can lead to think of a 2-colour scheme where the base colour is darker than the usual yellow.

Thank you @Giorgio N, very helpful information. In the photo of the same unit, are the mottles all over the place, or neat like the spots on a giraffe? That kind of camo with all  the green and brown spots separate of each other so that the yellow ochre that is underneath forms hard edged meanders, is beyond my airbrushing skills, so I try to choose camos that are a bit more messy with more over-spray.

 

[Giorgio N]

3 hours ago, TheKinksFan said:

Thank you @Giorgio N, very helpful information. In the photo of the same unit, are the mottles all over the place, or neat like the spots on a giraffe? That kind of camo with all  the green and brown spots separate of each other so that the yellow ochre that is underneath forms hard edged meanders, is beyond my airbrushing skills, so I try to choose camos that are a bit more messy with more over-spray.

 

 

In the picture I've seen the spots are very dense, so much that the aircraft looks to have a generally dark appearance with small light spots. Mind, we're talking of an in-flight picture taken with a B/W film of the era, so not really something top quality. From a modelling perspective it may actually be easier than those schemes with well defined spots.

I should also add that the fact that this aircraft had this camouflage does not mean that all aircraft of the unit wear the same. In the picture there's another aircraft visible (of chich I can't read the code) that seems to have a "cleaner" scheme