Hi James,
I love this exchange of Information and I dearly hope you don't mind my comments as your fantastic work itself is beyond any criticism
One of the reasons why I love this forum so much is that I can learn so much that I didn't know, because I didn't even think about asking. So I try to give my two cents where I think I could possibly give a hint.
The information I have on German aircrew uniforms are these:
I rely heavily on these Osprey books because as far as I can say they are very well researched. I never heared of black as early war dress and the exchange for field grey... But your post made me have a closer look at this book
It deals with German Army uniforms of WWI exhaustively and contains about 700 pages - but there's nothing in it dealing with the question of aircrew uniforms ... strange!
But the differnce in shade, especially when it comes to the very light jackets on your photos, is undoubtable. I just have another hypothesis: Next to their normal uniform every German soldier received working clothes, the so called drillichanzug. This was to be worn when it got dirty: For digging trenches, cleaning the barracks and other heavy work. This Drillichanzug was white or beige at the outbreack of the war. But that white working clothes were not the most clever idea was even realized at the German military bureaucracy and they started to dye these clothings field grey. That's the look of such a dyed Drillichjacke:
That's what I think the guys with the very light jackets are wearing, I think, on the Pic with the AEG bomber there are even the standing collars visible. And it would be logical: uparmouring a bomber plane is heavy work... So it's highly plausible, that due to shortages some went on wearing these light coloured (white/beige) Drillichjacken, some even wore their drillich trousers (which were threatened the same way) while maintaing aircraft or doing other heavy work behind the frontline. It is plausible as well that some aircrew received field grey uniforms due to shortages of black ones. But I think these differences between black or (field) grey on b/w photos of these times are very hard to review. I read some reports that frontline soldiers in the German army were recognizable from far away by their bleached uniforms, while the greenhorns still had their dark field grey ones. Clothing colors seem to jave faded quickly and I personally would take these shades as faded black - as I said, just my own interpretation.
by the way, your Walfisch ist just awesome too, I simply love the finish of this bird! And the question on blinked horses or not blinked horses .... pew... a very good one - maybe that depended on the anxiety of the horse...?
