Hello Argon,
in which sim does your Zeppelin fly ? Time to have a look at other sims ? Had a look at some pictures of L11 ...
showing the camouflage pattern:
L11 in flight, the propshafts to the props can be seen, along with the crude early "earlike" radiators. The aft gondola housed three engines, which would drive the three rear propellors, two were coupled to one shaft, to drive both two props at the outriggers, the third one drove the gondola's rear one. The rear forward gondola's engine drove the forward prop, and was coupled via gear to a special dynamo to produce energy to communication and telemetry within the Zeppelin, at the different stations.
" ... The fabric had an imprint of light blue dots and often lines as well. This gave the airship an overall garish-blue look. The canvas was stitched to the girders and then covered with fabric strips glued to them to protect and reinforce the seams. These strips were sometimes lighter or darker than the canvas, and when you consider the weathering effect, gave the overall color. The L-11 was one of only a few which retained its initial grayish color. Wear and tear took its toll on the airships, and they had to be patched with new canvas several times. Therefore different colors would be seen covering large areas. At one time the L-11 spent some time as a training ship and carried a white band around its nose to denote its purpose.
..."
The question of which colour those airships had, is indeed not easy to answer. The L11 was one of the few airships that received a camouflage pattern on the upper side. While almost all later naval airships were painted black at the underside, against being found by searchlights during the night raids, very few were painted at the upper half. Earlier Zeppelins did not have venting shafts, like the Schuette-Lanz airships, but needed an upper hull cloth that would let excessive hydrogen gas pass, or vented, while flying above their calculated maximum height. So the upper cloth had to be, while doped against water, permeable for gases from inside.
Another problem was the weathering of the outer hull by rain, ice, and sunlight. Especially the sunlight had a bad effect on cotton, and linen, but there were experiments of how to counter this by the use of corroded iron paint, which was supposed absorb the UV light (the latter is historically still in research, so don't quote me please). This certainly might have been done against the ageing of the inner gas cells, not for protection of the outer hull - this paint was applied on the inner side of the outer hull.
Generally all paints faded out quickly, and a Zeppelin would soon look weathered, losing the exact parting lines of the colours of the different dope applied. Since most Zeppelind did not make it past three months of service, there was no need to really improve the durability of paints, and surviving Zepps like L11, and L30, looked really worn, parts of the outer hull would certainly be renewed at critical points, like above the propellors (falling ice from the upper parts of the hull would be hurled against the hull, badly damaging it). So the area above props was usually made of the heavier linen, or even plywood.
Most early Zepps were of a yellowish colour, not grey, due to the mostly untreated cotton - apart from the colourless dope being applied, where it would be a bit of a darker yellow, like being drenched, or wet.
Greetings,
Catfish
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The L-11 was built for FS-WWI by Mossie and assembled and coded by myself. FS-WWI is a WWI mod for the WW2 flightsim Fighter Squadron: Screamin' Demons Over Europe (SDOE).
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