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Originally Posted by Deedoubleyou
.... It is my understanding at this point that the pictures from these publications are all that we have to draw from as reference for this enigmatic machine. It is a shame but then we must be grateful to have anything at all! If I may, in your observations made from your source material, how far forward of the Demon head did the checkerboard pattern extend to the nose of the fuselage and did the pattern go from the top all the way down to the bottom?
Many Thanks and Regards, Dwayne
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Firstly, thanks for the good words!
As you say- an enigmatic machine. It may be one of the more dramatically marked Jasta 5 airplanes, but also one of the least "visible" when it comes to extracting it's true scheme. There's the one big closeup photo and a few of the lineup shots where it's just hanging around in the background. The easiest thing about it is the demon head itself. But those darn checks and the colors. Sometimes it looks as if the overall fuselage was not the same overall color as most of the rest of Jasta 5. So many of them had that light gray fuselage- but not all, and I do wonder about Rumey's. Also, I now think the checks possibly extended several more rows forward, at least beyond the cockpit.....maybe! By playing around with the contrast settings in a hi-res scan of the photo in question, more checks seem to be popping out. The pattern does seem to to go all around from top to bottom.
If it seems like I'm hemming and hawing around, I guess I am! I really did only have the big photo and those few lineup pics to squint into, and a few text references concerning Jasta 5 colors in general. I was also sent some simple not-to-scale line drawings, nothing more than overall guides. It makes me want to scream out to the cosmos "Hey vonHipple- why didn't you tell Peter Gray about THIS airplane?"
Thanks for causing me to revisit this work and forgive me for probably raising more questions than I answered!That cover was finished November29, 2003 so it's been a trip through time!
Robert Karr
OLD BIRDS STAYING ALIVE - THE AVIATION ART OF ROBERT KARR