LUFTWAFFE FIGHTER COLORS 1941-1944

Luftwaffe fighter camouflage in one box

At the turn of 1940 and 1941 the day fighter Geschwader left the dark pair of green tones behind and went over to a scheme built on the trio of RLM 74, RLM 75 and RLM 76. The upper surfaces took on a gray-green and a gray-violet cast divided into soft fields, and the sides of the fuselage were covered by a light blue-gray tone meant to dissolve the machine against the sky. In this guise the Messerschmitt Bf 109 in its F and G versions and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 flew from the coast of the Channel to the Kuban.

Why there is a yellow in the set

The fourth bottle is the saturated yellow RLM 04. It served for quick recognition markings: the tip of the engine cowling, the undersides of the wingtips and a band around the rear fuselage. On the Eastern Front and over the Mediterranean such areas belonged to the ordinary fit of a machine, and they will give a model a legible character sooner than any other detail. The same yellow was also used for the recognition bands over the Balkans.

Working with the shades

These are acrylics meant mainly for an airbrush, thinned with water or with the thinner of the same range, and you will manage them with a brush at least on small areas. Shake the bottle thoroughly before you take any out, because the pigment settles to the bottom and unmixed paint loses its covering power. Rather lay several thin layers down, so that the fine engraving of the panels and the rivets stays visible. Hard transitions between the fields can be sprayed over a piece of string or over a mask held away from the surface. Anyone after a period impression lets the upper fields show through slightly and does not try for a perfectly sharp division, because in field workshops the spraying was done freehand.