Borman, the skins look great, I hope you can find some way to make them available rather than just taunting us with pictures!

MM - love the Kempf Dr I.

Cheers,

RD.

Yeah, but I've already noticed that putting on the skin also imparts improved aiming and general air combat skill enhancement...the SPAD that attacked me found this out the hard way, only took a couple of minutes instead of the usual interminable fight

[MF] Gunloon

Which leads to a very interesting question - was all that customization for recognition within friendly flights or as a means of intimidating the other guy?

Salute! Yes I am really sorry to have you gents wait for this, but want to post them to j5 site, it is the right way to do it. Baumer is working on it and will just be a few more days.

Some more screens, for now. Theese 2 machines I would love some help with, the damn cigarshape is causeing a lot of trouble for me with theese, bravarian flag (checkers diagonal lines) and Rumey's demon machine (checkers) Absolute horror to do the back of cigarshape, you dont want to know who many hours I spend on them... uhhh

A bit of both I think, also I belive the german pilots needed independant confirmation of a kill for it to count.

Painting your plane bright red or whatever would assist ground troops as well as other flyers as to who shot down whom. Im sure though there was an element of bravado about it.

The RFC were much more restrictive about allowing their pilots to paint their planes.

The explanation put forth in the movie "Richthofen vs. Brown" was:

German pilots were ordered to paint their planes to make the type indiscernible and camouflage them. The elite pilots thought of this as being cowardish and dishonorable. So they "stretched" the order and gave their planes very loud and flashy paint jobs.

I don't know if there's any historical truth in that explanation.

None at all, AFAIK. The bright colours were to aid identification in a pre-airborne radio era and to boost morale by having team colours. I doubt if it would have any intimidating impact (except possibly a red Dr I).

Cheers,

RD.

It could also work against you.

If the same flights see each other over-and-over on patrol and in combat, I would think each side would keep track of the talents and marking of each plane.

Back at the old aerodrome, a game plan could be formulated to gang up on the best on the next flight .... specially an all red airplane.

That's what i would do, if I lived long enough ..... LOL.

Actually that was prety much what MvR wrote in his book He wrote that brits made elite squadron just to hunt him (false, but he didnt know that), so he ordered all of his jasta planes to be painted red (only his was totally red tought) at one point.

J5, looking great!

A constructive note re: Flashar's Iron Fist. Take a look at the photo of that pranged machine: the center section of the upper wings between the chevrons was a solid color from the leading to trailing edge, believed to be the same green as the tail. The chevrons run from the inboard edges of the ailerons and abut against this green center section near the wing's leading edge.