[StephenLawson]

Originally Posted by Langdon

Hello "Old Bone"

If you go back to the beginning of this thread Stephen you will see I have been quoting Allan Toelle's extensive study of the large piece of original fabric that is held by the RCMI in Toronto (as well as a number of other pieces), I have also seen Ferko's correspondence concerning the photos but that has nothing to do with Allan's study. He minutely inspected the fabric under a tri-nocular microscope and noted to his surprise that there was no streaky camouflage where it should normally have been. Dan-San has stated that the aircraft was not painted red at the factory so I have asked him how it could be that it was not painted in streaky upper camo but was fully stencilled, he has dodged question in his reply by moving to acceptance sheet info which is irrelevant to the discussion. Langdon

Hello Langdon,
I have been following this thread pretty closely. My comments were made just to fill what I see as gaps in the conversation. You have to remember that some of your readers here don't have the same research background as we do. I greatly respect Dan, Alan and yourself. But lets face facts. The stencilling was a requirement whether camouflage was present or not. Even training aircraft that had NO camouflage had to have serials and werke numbers present. If Dr.I 425/17 was overpainted at the factory the serial and werke numbers would have still been applied. Maybe they were overpainted after assembly in the factory or in the field. There was considerable over painting done to this machine as the crosses were changed at least three times in a very short period. We are not talking about the whole airframe but all cross areas and possibly even a rudder change. The chipped area I mentioned would certainly have been overpainted in a reasonable amount of time.