The WW1 modelers' reference library > Markings and Camouflage

Albatros wing colors

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Rick_H:
It's been years since I was really active at building WWI aircraft.  When I checked out, the standard wisdom was that Albatros wings were either dark-ish green and brown or dark-ish green and mauve, although sometimes it was referred to as lilac.

Now I am trying to take this area of my hobby seriously again, and I see a good number of Albatri, built by respected modelers, with two shades of green, with the port wing usually showing the kind of muddy light green.

What changed?  What is the approved reference material that shows these three-tone wings?

Thanks,
Rick in Seattle

torbiorn:
I don’t think I’ve see. any two-tone dark and light green on the scouts. The only examples of that have been two-seaters from 1917. I’m not authority though - I only read up on the subject of markings for the specific model I’m building.


I relied on this for the D.II:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/3806146/The-Camouflage-and-Markings-of-the-Albatros-D-II-Aircraft?secret_password=167cwln24efbek8mfw5b

macsporran:
I don't think anything has changed, Rick, just our understanding has improved markedly.

Back in the first couple of decades of styrene plastic kits a lot of the accepted wisdom on colouring was based on hazy recollections of ageing combatants and assumptions that the markings some fanciful artist put on a colour plate was holy script. I remember faithfully painting the original Eduard 1/48 Fokker D.VI in the two-tone green/mauve scheme illustrated in the Blandford Fighters book, only to discover later that D.VIs were pretty well always covered in lozenge fabric.
Thanks to the comprehensive research by Ray Rimmell, GvW, DSA et al, we now have a much better grasp of things.

Of course, we are often relying on blurry old orthochromatic photos as references - where any exist at all - so the modeller still has a lot of leeway in deciding what he thinks his subject would look like. I'm a great believer in personal interpretation - like my plain wooden winged D.VIII or blue D.II - and challenge any critics to prove me wrong.

Paint your Voss cowling green - or yellow - whichever you feel inclined!
Sandy

Big Sky Modeler:
I thought some of the early fighters like Fokker D series, and Albatros D.I and D.II had three color camouflage on top consisting of a light green, dark green, and brown.  Is that correct?

rcboaterbill:
When I was building my collection of 1/72 Albatros D.V in 2021,  I dove into into the whole “Mauve or Lilac?” thing  and came away more confused than ever.

Here is a link to a thread I started over on Hyperscale-  I got some good input and links to references:

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/hyperscale/ww1-german-mauve-purple-on-albatros-d-v-t524965.html

Hope this helps…..

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