Wet Blending of 3 Colors on Fokker Dr.1's

[Sreiko]

Guess I should scan and post those sometime if there is interest.

Yes, please

[RAGIII]

Originally Posted by Taz

Dave, Acer- Once my pet peeve of 588/17 having been overpainted with bottom light blue was killed, I think the possibility of blue added to the upper streaking certainly was a possibility. Also the possibility it was brighter green than earlier Dr.Is. Consider also that 588/17 was one of the last 11 Dr.Is produced (598/17 was the last, 599/17 would have been V.7G, WN 1919 converted, which never happened) with the wings having a ZAK inspection date of 22 March 1918. This is getting close to Fokker D.VII production, so 588/17's paint job could have been influenced by D.VII practices. Note early D.VIIs did not have returned light blue paint like the Dr.Is. 588/17's tailplane definitely had returned light blue paint, but it is harder to tell on the fuselage.

Taz
Terry Phillips

Taz, It is good to see you remain open to alternate possibilities when evidence points to probability ! That being said, in the end who knows? Someimes I shudder when a new thread is started and I think, "here we go again" This thread as I said earlier has been very enlightening, and if I might say so, CIVIL!
RAGIII

[Welsh Dave]

OOOPS! Line playing up....

[Welsh Dave]

When I said we have only one public sample of streaky fabric from a D.VII, I was forgetting the framed serial number from 252/18, formerly on display at the Musee de l'Air in Paris.

I know this only from a photograph, in which it looks very brown. However, so does everything else in that photo! If I boost the colour saturation, the area in shadow at the left end of the panel turns purple.

As published in a recent Windsock, the same shadowy area is bright green! A friend who saw the sample in the Musee a few years ago thinks it was in fact streaky green, the viridian found on 368/18. Does anyone know this sample, and its true colour(s)?

If it is in fact brown, that means the olive dye continued into D.VII production for a while.

[Piotr]

Gentlemen,

Did you seen early production Fok D.VII canvas samples from IWM collection?

I saw its about week ago - and must tell you - it bring me in to the knees!

Mr Abbott : You seen this samples or only saw description?

Piotr

[Dan_San_Abbott]

Piotr:
I only saw the samples from the Fok.DR.144/17. This was actually a secondary interest. I have relied on Paul's studies on the Fok.D.VII. I wanted to see the Battle maps of the Western Front for 1917 and 1918. They were of my primary interest. At the time I was plotting battles on Michelin maps, in order to have a better under standing of the battles fought in 1917 anf 1918.
Blue skies,
Dan-San

[RAGIII]

Taz,Dave, Acer and Dan,
Somehow this all began to sound familiar! I checked my 1964 Harleyford publication, von Richthofen and The Flying Circus and this is what I found:
" Inspection of photos of some Dr 1s show a vertical streaky effect on the sides of the fuselage and top surfaces,this being the original finish of grey/green and brown with the under surface of light blue before the hexagonal pattern cmouflage was introduced."

Perhaps the oft maligned Nowarra was closer than we thought!
RAGIII

[Taz]

Rick- I am really comfortable with the inputs we have seen from people I really respect on this subject. Heinz Nowarra was one of the early giants who opened up the field of WW-I (and WW-II as well, he was really prolific) aviation history. We have learned a lot in the last 40 years, but Nowarra undoubtedly had access to samples of fabric from the Dr.I and D.VII a long time ago. The samples he saw may not have suffered as much UV damage as the ones now available. His conclusion on the colors matches up with what Dave and Acer have been discussing and is not inconsistent with what Dan-San described he saw.

The difference between Acer's black and Dave's grey could just be the amount of black dye introduced into the varnish. The new grey/light black sample in the IWM really answered a lot of questions. I need to contact Alan Toelle and get all his descriptions of Dr.I fabric in one place.

Dave's description of olive paint on samples of 425/17 was completely new to me. I thought all the samples were over either CDL or light blue paint. Will have to dig up that source, as well. Learn something new every time we do this.

Dave, acer, Dan-San- Great stuff and thanks for all participating in something which could be perceived as old hat, but proved not to be.

Taz
Terry Phillips

[Sreiko]

When said grey all of you have to consider chemical process which due to the time change color. I know color sample of WW2 color [mean not only the age but also the quality] which was in original ocher but during the time changed into the grey and the sample are keep in home out of sun light.

There should be also taken interaction among the pigments and liquid where it was mixed. The fact that this color rapidly changed and this changes could be noted in weeks have to give high attention when look at the very old samples.

[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?