[Welsh Dave]

Firstly, regarding Richthofen samples, I'd like to refer to Page 20 of Windsock International Volume 21, No.2, March/April 2005.

Several samples of fabric reportedly from Richthofen's Dr.I 425/17 are shown.
Best is the port fuselage cross at the Royal Canadian Military Institute, Toronto, having red applied over typical streaky camo with part of the serial number and at least two stages of cross evolution. The red has dulled, and the streak colours cannot be determined from the photo.

A portion of fabric, presumably from a leading edge, was reportedly given to the late John Garwood in Australia. It shows CDF, pale greyish-blue tinted dope, light turquoise-blue paint and, of course, red paint. It looks as if all the base colours were exposed when a leading-edge reinforcing tape was removed. Dark patches on the CDF may be remnants of olive paint, and some show through the red.

Alan Toelle has suggested that these may be exhaust soot alone, but a sample I handled at the RAF Museum, Hendon while preparing an exhibition had the same layers of topside colouring. In that sample, I saw paint under the red, in colours similar to those of the IWM green/brown sample. The dark streaks were more greenish than the light.

Also at the RAFM are a piece from the underside tip of one of the elevator balances (red over blue over tinted dope) and a small piece, complete with service envelope and accompanying letter (I never made a note of the details, but it was stamped and postmarked in late April 1918) from an upper or side surface. The same red overlies the same streaky camo, and the envelope is rendered translucent by oil over an area slightly greater than the
sample.

Where red flaked freshly off the underside sample, the blue was purer, i.e. less turquoise, than in the long-exposed areas.

Back to Windsock: a small sample from the AWM in Canberra is largely washed out by flash, but there appears to be a darker, duller area at the left hand side of the piece. It could be streaky camo under the red.

Finally, there is a photo of several pieces of fabric from the Charles Donald collection. The largest of these includes a control cable exit port, said to be from a fuselage side. All of these samples, attributed to one Morris Waldman of 65 Squadron RAF, are red over clear doped fabric. Peter Grosz wrote in the next edition of Windsock that he had always suspected the Donald collection, and the owner would never answer queries about the fabric.

Camouflaged fabric in national museums in Britain, Canada and, possibly, Australia, versus several pieces of CDF in one private collection....

I make no judgement, except to say that if these pieces are genuine, and given that a well authenticated museum piece of fuselage fabric is camouflaged under the red, the large piece is more likely to come from the underside of the upper wing than from the fuselage. A replaced wing might be painted red over CDF, if only to save weight. Alan Toelle found exhaust soot in such a sample.

The shade of red is the same in all the pictures, though I think there is too much red in the magazine print; even the CDF looks pink!

I don't know if Heinz Nowarra had access to samples, but writing when he did, he must have met plenty of WW1 airmen, some with fresh memories of the period. The green/grey/brown description would fit a triplane just beginning to weather towards the colours in the IWM samples.

Checking the photo of the IWM fabric again, I found that the basic hue of the darkest streaks is in fact a pure yellow, giving a strong olive green when shaded. This contrasts with the light areas, which are in the orange sector of the colour wheel.

I think Fokker used an olive green dye, distinctly green when fresh, and a neutral grey dye, very dark, as the basis of his paints.

In this interpretation the three cans visible in the works photo would have contained:

1. A mixture of the green dye and varnish. This produced the lightest areas when applied to CDF, and it turned brown quite quickly.

2. Green dye, grey dye and varnish, possibly with a small amount of zinc oxide. This produced the intermediate tone visible in photographs. No unadulterated sample has been preserved, but it forms the darker streaks in the IWM sample. The grey appears to inhibit the browning tendency of the green while darkening it.

3. Dark grey dye and varnish. This was applied over CDF in places to produce small areas of dirty-looking grey with deep blackish streaks as in the other IWM sample, but mostly it was blended into the other paints to make extra-dark green streaks. These show the least colour change.

Reports of triplanes incorporating some form of blue into their upper and side camouflage are not precise enough to allow a reliable reconstruction.

At some point (or perhaps more than one) the olive dye was replaced by a stronger, viridian, green. This is positively known only from a D.VII, 368/18, built just before the streaky finish was discontinued for fuselages. The finish continued to be used on undercarriage wings for some time after that.

I've attached a very tentative reconstruction, based on the dark streaks in the IWM photo, of how the shades may have looked on a factory-fresh triplane. For a weathered one, add brown....

Just an idea, but what if the browning tendency prompted concern about D.VIIs being confused with Allied aircraft? A brown Tripe was no problem, as the type was then unique at the Front, but a brown biplane was a different matter. Could that be the reason for the change to a colour-fast pure green on some D.VIIs?