Who flew this DR1 in red and white with bird?

['14-'18aviationcollector]

Hi Lloyd,

I have asked quite a few people about this and other subjects over the years, and of course obtaning the full and correct story is never easy.

Here are the facts as I understand them: I mentioned just a few days ago that when I was at the Museum of Army Aviation at Oakey c.1991 I saw what appears to be a cross from MvR's triplane, 425 / '17. When the photos were developed I took them to the AWM, and there was immediately some confusion, because they said that is one of the crosses in our collection! It is very distinctive, and the only way there could be two of them is if one is a replica or a fake of the original - mostly because is is covered in signatures of Australian troops. The AWM immediately went to check that their cross was still in its place in the collection, which thankfully it was and still is. That still didn't solve the mystery though, becuase the question then became which one is authentic, and which one is not? It became evident reasonably quickly that the cross in the AWM is the authentic one, thankfully. The copy is quite good, but it certainly is not perfect, and a few short cuts were taken. The most obvious short cuts I noticed were where the cross had been updated. On the original, the white is heavily discoloured where it has been applied over the curved black arms of the original cross, and the red applied by or for MvR. On the copy, the colour has simply been approximated by mixing white and red and white and black paints. It does not have the complicated attributes that the original has, given that the discolouration has been caused by thinly applied white paint, surely some discolouration due to age and possibly even some bleeding through of the underlying colour to the top, visible surface. On the copy, all of these attributes have been approximated. Such a complicated process is not very easy to replicate, and the differences between the copy and the original are reasonably obvious, although the copy is a reasonably good copy.

I have been told that this copy was made as a copy, rather than a fake. I don't think it was ever intended to cause any deception, but in fact was more likely to have been a copy which could then be displayed on a wall or in an office, in the same way that prints are made of art work. They are not made with the intention of being passed off as original, but are the next best thing that most of us could ever hope to be able to obtain. It is my understanding that some paint was spilled on this particular cross by the same person who made the replica cross, and that it was decided to just re paint the entire surface in a uniform colour. I don't think that the AWM would have been very happy about this, to say the least but presumably this occurred before they were able to stop it from happening. These days they probably have the technology to restore this particular cross, but at the time there was probably nothing they were able to do about the cross being painted over.

Regards,

David.