WWII FINNISH AIR FORCE COLORS

A pattern for coniferous forests and lakes

During the Second World War Finnish machines carried a combination that cannot be mistaken for anything else: broken fields of black and olive green above, a pale blue underneath. The pattern came about for fighting over a landscape of lakes and dark coniferous forest, where an aircraft was lost from above against the dark terrain and from below against the northern sky. After 1944 a light gray finish was added, which appeared on machines in late and postwar service.

Contents

Four bottles correspond to four Finnish names, which the supplier also gives in the original wording. Black covers the larger of the upper fields and olive green the rest, the blue shade of the lower surfaces is identical with the German light blue, and the fourth item is a light gray matching the standard American tone. The set therefore covers both the wartime and the later finish.

Working with the dark field

The most common mistake is to lay the black on at full strength. The panel lines are then lost on the model and the area looks like a hole. It works well to apply it thinly over a dark gray base, to leave the edges weaker and, once dry, to lighten it with stippled patches of green. The transition between the upper and lower finish is fairly sharp on these machines and runs high up the sides of the fuselage.

A note on winter machines

The winter overspray in white was done in a hurry and with washable finishes, so it wore through and revealed the color beneath. Anyone building such a variant needs both upper colors as an underlying layer and has to apply the white so that they show through it. A thin layer of hairspray or the salt method under the white finish helps with a chipped look.