FW 190 RLM's

[B-17engineer]

Originally Posted by Wurger

Who is the makers of these kits?

[stona]

You are quite right,JG 53 certainly had some "interesting" schemes! Seven quid for that big Airfix kit was good going, someone made a mistake! You've got to get it finished,that will be one big,impressive diorama.
B-17 engineer I'm not sure what kits you mean.
Cheers
Steve

[stona]

In follow up to Airframes and my discussion about the appearance of the grey colours approximating to RLM74 and 75 and then their actual application to aircraft I have this from Dave (the same chap who gave us the cockpit colour info. for early Bf109s) from another thread.I quote him here:

"The colours 74, 75 & 76 were first made available circa May 1941 and made official with the publication of L.Dv.521/1 in November 1941 which included the addition of three new colours; 74, 75 & 76. Yet, and for reasons probably best known to themselves, Messerschmitt had already began applying it to 109Fs during June/July 1941.

Interestingly, the first recorded example of a 109 finished in 74/75/76 was a C-1 of the IV.(N)/JG2 which was carrying out 'field tests' of these then proposed colours in mid-1940 in Norway on behalf of the E-Stelle. I believe my colleague Ken Merrick covers this in depth in his recent camouflage and markings books from Classic/Chevron.

As far as the mixing of 70, 71 and 02 goes, this was certainly taking place amongst the Channel-based Jagdgeschwader during mid to late 1940 and is an area which I covered briefly in the article that I gave a link to at the '109 Lair' earlier in this thread. Indeed, throw 65 into the mix as well and a whole range of greens, greys and blues can be produced. As I also mention in that article, there can be no doubt that given the infinite variables that would apply to 'field mixes' it is more than a probability that some of these either approximated or even matched the later 75/75/76 series of greys.

L.Dv.521/1 = Luftwaffen-Dienstvorschriften 521/1 (roughly translates to Official Air Force regulations 521/1)
Sources for the 74/75/76 references comes from copies of original RLM and Messerschmitt documents in my files while those for the reference to locally made field mixes comes from copies of original documents and a series of correspondence and discussions which I had with former ground crew and pilots between 1978 and 1998.

Cheers
Dave

Hope this helps. It seems that the oficial tests were being carried out in a (relatively) safe area away from the channel front.whilst various units operating accross the channel were doing there own experiments. Anyway it looks like Airframes has got his big109 on the money.
Note to self - re-read Merrick!
Steve

[Airframes]

Thanks Steve, very useful and interesting stuff. It seems I'm probably right in going with the info I had, where the 'early' greys, as per JG53 for example, where probably very close to, or the same as, what evenually became the RLM 74/75/76 range.
As for the 1/24th scale Bf109E, I need to make a base for it before I can do the final bits on the model itself, as it needs to be sort of 'blended' into the ground work, where the lower engine cowling has settled into the earth. I'll get around to it soon, as the model is in the way, and needs to be put on a display shelf!