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Flypaper - You seem to be taking things way too personally, as though it is directed at you. I am simply adding to the information that we have here. It is not about you. Alan's research in the arena of French colouring is at the leading edge of the study. Like any other company French manufacturers used what they had and were allowed to use by contract. As Dan San Abbott has said and I agree with, you can't take a few solitary examples and expect to outline a whole production batch or a series. We try to look at the production batch as a whole and note what was happening there over-all.
French manufacturers often had more than one type of aircraft on the factory floor under construction. Spad VII and XII and XIII types were a typical example. Contracts had to be fulfilled and there is often no clear cut definition when certain finishes were adopted. But referencing photo evidence of all these types does give us a clearer image. Typically 5 colour camouflage started showing up on late Spad VII, XII and early Spad XIII (late 1917 - early 1918) at the same time. So ecru wold have been a colour used in all of these examples. As has been mentioned previously Alan notes that there are certain anomalies.
Transferring this application to the Nieuport series one can almost track the various camouflages by examples that were produced at the same time. This over-view of these airframes helps us understand the situation at the time of production.
Going through "Project Butterfly" we can get a serial listing of a large section of each Spad production batch by airframe and when they left the factory or were at the front and whether it had camouflage or not. This is not a portion of the articles that is generally discussed. So giving more information to everyone helps us have a better understanding of the subject at hand.
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