StefenK

KATHARINA
Then, God be bless'd, it is the blessed sun:
But sun it is not, when you say it is not;
And the moon changes even as your mind.
What you will have it named, even that it is;
And so it shall be so for Katharina.
—The Taming of the Shrew


Gentlemen,
As I have written previously, I agree with Brad that photographs often provide useful reference objects of known or approximately known colors with which to gauge an unknown ‘target’ object. *The image of the Frenchmen examining one of the example Eindeckers is one such. *However, the judgment of the viewer stills plays its part in the interpretation, and *perhaps not surprisingly, I draw somewhat different conclusions. *First, if the officer on the other side of the aircraft is in a tunic of bleu d’horizon, then the officer with his back toward us is in what color tunic? *Second, *computer graphics sampling and side-by-side comparisons of various areas of the fuselage and this officer’s tunic where it under the same illumination along the center of his back indicates an essential tonal identity—not a lighter fuselage.

If we are going to make comparisons with other known, or approximately known, objects in the photographs, then does not the tone of the fuselage of E.I 58, above, require to be understood in relation to the wooden building in the background? *If seems likely to me that this some ‘barn gray brown.’ *While the tonality that they share does not mean that the fuselage was the same hue, it suggests to me that the fuselage was darker than the conventional “accepted description” of a light, yellowish off-white, as in the following example:



To my eye, this represents a minor variation on the theme of clear-doped linen, as in the following examples:





As Finn indicates these renditions are in line with representations of CDL aircraft in period postcards, but the problem remains, quite clearly in my view, that the photographic appearance of Eindeckers differs materially from that of almost all other aircraft that can be identified as being covered in CDL. *To wit:



It may be objected that the comparison between the bleached linen of the Pfalz Eindeckers and the unbleached linen of the Fokker is unfair, but a comparison between the fuselage at the Fokker Werke and that of Tabloids under under construction suggests that the two types of fabric are—sans some other reason—photographically indistinguishable.



If Fokker’s subsequent Doppeldeckers continued the use of the same unbleached linen, then the appearance of these machines only further emphasizes the point, as it is of a sufficiently light color that many, if not most, of the early D-series machines finished in CDL do not seem to have required a white cross field—in analogy with the Pfalz fabric-covered Eindeckers.



Fokker were clearly experimenting with various camouflage schemes during production of the early D-series: 2- and possibly 3-tone sprayed disruptive patterns as well as the streaked finish that was to become their hallmark. *On the basis of the photographic record, the question begs asking whether some of this experimentation did not commence with the earlier monoplanes. *In the following photo of Kesta 4 with both types of machines on display, the fuselage of the E.IV easily matches the lighter areas mid-fuselage of the camouflaged D.IIs and IIIs.



The photographs suggest that the final finish on the Eindeckers was a pigmented dope, or paint, and that it is this that accounts for the tonal difference in the factory photograph between the finished elevators and the uncompleted fuselage covering, as well as for the likeness between the the E-series fuselages and areas of painted camouflage on D-series machines as compared with areas that are patently CDL—see especially the next-to-last image in the initial post—not to speak of *the overwhelmingly common difference of Fokker Eindeckers with their other CDL brethren, whether German or Allied. *I will willing put aside this hobby horse if someone can post a series of 4 photographs of Aviatiks, Bristols, Morances, Nieuports, Schuckerts, or Sopwiths, whose CDL skins present as dark as the four Fokkers above.

Best to all,
Sstefen

c 2002