The article in Windsock will help.
‘Udet’s Fokker D.VII Fighters’ by Dan-San Abbott, Windsock Vol.4, Spring 1989. Oblt. Ernst Udet's "Du doch nicht!!" was a Fokker Co. built D.VII.
My italics and emphasis. Just a note of caution on making such a clear statement of "fact"..........
It aint necessarily so, as the song goes.
For everyone's peace of mind, and to avoid any speculation, I am using the article in the Windsock Fokker anthology vol.2 "The Importance of being Erni's" by Dave Roberts as my principle reference for these markings and this article speculates that "
Du doch..." was probably OAW built. In the absence of any clear and unequivocal evidence to the contrary, that is the information I will run with. I know that there is a natural tendency to seek certainties when discussing WWI markings but we all know (or at least
should know) that certainty is a rare commodity in this area - despite what many past commentators would have you believe.
Take Dan-San's statements on exact colour references, quoting the Methuen book; many of these stemmed from the time when he thought that he had discovered a kind of "Rosetta Stone" for translating black and white photograph grey-scales into colour, which was later shown to be totally erroneous, though, as far as I know, he never officially "recanted". Nonetheless the observations went into print or remain echoing in cyberspace through the Aerodrome archives and are often repeated just as strongly and with little in the way of supporting evidence by one or two others. Here let me offer a heart-felt caveat: I am not, repeat NOT saying that all that Dan-San wrote was dross, far from it as he contributed much to our current understanding and was a tireless researcher. I would just say that sometimes his enthusiastic search for answers led him to draw conclusions which owed slightly more to wishful thinking than to dispassionate examination of the facts.
I am very cautious in my descriptions of matters where no proof absolute exists, as is anyone else who wants to keep ego and mistaken dogma out of the discussion. In observing the Wingnut Wings approach to markings I note that they seem to mainly go for ones which are reasonably well documented and have a higher than average chance of being "right" whereas I sniff around more on the margins and produce others which are, quite often, more speculative - in some cases ultra speculative but I will always tell you what the speculation is!! It's also worth saying that I have neither the WNW massive photo archive nor try as I might!, do I have Richard Alexander's superlative analytical and observational skills when interpreting photographs. Udet's D.VIIs are a case in point; D.VIIF 4253/18 is pretty well photographed and the serial is positively known, whereas the others which I am tackling have relatively sketchy records.
To my mind there is no better example of the WWI marking sleuth's art than Dave Robert's careful and amusing article in the second Anthology volume - indeed the whole three-volume oeuvre is highly recommended, as is Ray Rimell's exemplary approach to the colours and markings issue.
