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Dan-San,
Its usually good form to answer questions outstanding prior to asking your own but I guess you have no answers, or explanations for your dodgy quote.
I believe I have answered all of these questions in my statements above but I will attempt to do so again.
477/17 was the aircraft in which he gained the most success and therefore his main aircraft due to whatever reason and as RAGIII states we can see it receiving its balken crosses first. 152/17 had been painted in the scheme that Jasta 11 switched to shortly after moving to LeChelle so it too was almost certainly there. We have photos of 425/17 at Lechelle as well as 127/17.
As I have stated previously my personal belief is that 425/17 arrived from the factory in a red upper scheme with blue underneath and covered with normal stencils, at some stage prior to LeChelle the entire aircraft was painted red with the exception of its narrow bordered national insignia (as per the photos).
As with you I cannot give an exact time or date when the aircraft arrived which was the point of asking you that same question concerning the departure of 152/17. What we do know is that if 425/17 arrived after the 12th of April as you suggest then it would never have been painted in a scheme that was outdated, not once but three times (also your suggestion is that it had nothing to do with MvR at this stage, and so it was not all-red which must have been strange given it has no upper-surface camouflage), a scheme that could only have been painted prior to the arrival at LeChelle or immediately after arrival in the first days (the latter is highly unlikely as we can see Jasta 6 had already converted their aircraft).
There is no proof that 425/17 was not flown operationally In fact Allan Toelle mentions that the lower fuselage has considerable soot and Castor oil staining its surface which is mixed with the paint producing a darker shade that gets lighter the higher you look on the port side fuselage fabric at the RCMI, this would be unlikely if the aircraft had only be flown a couple of times. Why he was unsuccessful on it we may never know. Having said that we have no idea how many flights MvR made in any of his operational aircraft. I think Udet (if not then another) mentions that they often flew five times a day, how many flights can you verify for 477/17 (feel free to answer the questions above first)?
I have held and inspected the control column, it has been modified for MvR, the grip was widened by cutting the tubes and inserting extra pieces, the blip switch was removed from its normal location and placed next to the right side grip handle, there are other modifications as well. I also inspected the foot step which has small brass plugs inserted in its ends that were nicely rounded, these were painted with black enamel when the rest of the step was painted. I believe this aircraft was built specifically for MvR so why wouldn't he have it with him?
Langdon
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