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#4010271 - 09/15/14 09:36 PM Late War Luftwaffe Colours - Help Needed  
Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 1,248
PeterMBooth Offline
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PeterMBooth  Offline
Member

Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 1,248
Pontypridd, South Wales,UK
Hi Guys,

I am about to build a batch of late war Luftwaffe kits - Me 109G & K, Me 262, Fw 190D and Ta152 and need a bit of advice on the colour schemes. Back in 1976 when the Airfix Guide was published the"late" colours were thought to be RLM74/75/76 but things have moved on. I have looked at quite a few books on Camo, the IPMS Stockholm charts and a wide range of other books such as the Osprey Aces series, and I have a pretty good idea of the colours which were supposed to be used, and even bought a batch of paints from 2 different so called authentic ranges but there are many contradictions so I was hoping that people such as Fran Zee could give me some info about RLM81, 82 and 83.

Of course I realise that at that stage of the war shortages of the required pigments to make the paints, and also shortages of the paints themselves resulted in many variations, particularly when the "black men" had to mix up whatever they had to hand. Add to that some paints weathering badly. I am reasonably happy with the fact that there were wide differences in RLM 81 causing it to be known as Braunviolett, Olivbraun and Dunkelgrun depending on who manufactured it. As to RLM82 this is sometimes called Hellgrun, which I would expect to be quite a light colour, but is also called Dunkelgrun which sounds to be quite dark. My main problem is RLM83 which is also called Dunkelgrun but which, according to the Osprey profiles varies between a light greyish green similar to Russian Army (Topside) Green from White Ensign Models paint range to a much darker colour not much lighter than RLM70 Schwartzgrun.

Any info would be appreciated, particularly about RLM83.

Cheers,

Peter



With increasing age should come wisdom and tolerance, but as the saying goes, "there is no fool like an old fool" as I prove regularly!

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#4010704 - 09/16/14 10:23 PM Re: Late War Luftwaffe Colours - Help Needed [Re: PeterMBooth]  
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 5,260
LLv34_Doc_1 Offline
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LLv34_Doc_1  Offline
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 5,260
France
Hi Peter,

Actually from what I understood things looks more simple than expected.

- 1943/1944 was a grey camo (RLM74/75/76) used for high altitude fights especially against American bombers.

- late 1944 and 1945 camo was a low altitude defensive camo (RLM81(chocolate)/82(green)/76) with some tone variations cause of late war production.

- We can forget about RLM83. AS the fictive RLM84, RLM83 (dark green) was used by all those guys who expect to find correct colors from grey tones photos. Actually all official camo shemes are only RLM 81/82/76 as were the known color shots. Even more Michael Ullmann claims that he had found official documents stating that RLM83 would actually be a dark blue color for late MTO camo...

my 2 cents waiting more from Fran Zee wink

cheers, Olivier


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