Albatros D.III In Polish Service....

[Lucky13]

Albatros D.III (Oeffag 253) "5" Serial 253.218 from 7th Fighter Squadron, Kiev, May 1919, personal aircraft of KPT Meria Cooper....

Would these decals be correct, or are they too brown?

Plus, the aircraft behind.... Albatros D.III (Oeffag 253) "13" Fighter Squadron, Bobrujsk Airfield, April 1920....

It says Brown/Natural Wood, I imagine that they mean unpainted wood panels?

 

[Donivanp]

Pretty cool Jan, most interesting.

But I'll not try and answer any of your questions as I would end up being WORNG.

 

[jimmaas]

The OEFFAG Albatroses started out with natural wood fuselages - there are some beautiful reconstruction photos on the web that are well worth searching out. The "davenport" (my term) fabric wing camouflage probably had color variation so the example shown is reasonable, maybe a little stark. Toning it down with a thin tan overspray might help.

 

[GrauGeist]

Jan, the "natural wood" would have been a form of varnished plywood.

As you know, wood takes in a "wet" tone when varnished (clear coated), so it literally comea down to the type of wood used in the construction of the aircraft, which determines the tone of the varnished wood.
There is a difference in shades with Birch, Pine, Spruce, etc.

 

[Wurger]

I agree with GG on the plywood colour and tone when varnished. Just a brief note .. also the wood tone gets darker in time due to the weather conditions. Mostly because of the moisture and the dust.

The answer to your question about the brown colour of the decals .. the Model Maker firm made them after a discussion with experts for the early Polish AF. Actually the camouflage is the WW1 Austria-Hungary equivalent of the WW1 German Lozenge. It is said that the camo was printed as the brown-beige and something else on the green background. IMHO it is very likely that the pattern could have been printed with the brown, light green and the dark green colours while the beige one was nothing more but the fabric colour. It would mean that there was nothing applied and the areas stayed in the natural fabric colour. Just a kind of saving.
Additionally please keep in mind that the appearance of colours of scanned pics in the net is incorrect very often.