>> **** DONE: 1/48 Ta-183 "Huckebein" - Prototype / Weird Aircraft / Trainers

[mikewint]

My first problem was in blindly ordering by RLM number and not checking the names...Then finding the bottle 83 was the wrong color was problem two. The "Oh Shite now I can't find it" was problem three and finally "Yippie I finded it" and NOT noticing it was an ENAMEL was number four. Spraying it and attempting to clean with isopropyl was number five.
Fortunately the enamel Dunkelgrun matches the ACRYL Dunkelgrun on the wings. The enamel has more luster but after Future and Flat Clear that distinction will vanish.
Starting with the Dunklegelb color confusion with the Maus I've never had so many color problems

 

[T Bolt]

Yea model master has got the 82 and 83 reversed.
A year ago I did about the same thing you did Mike but in reverse. Didn't reilise I had grabbed the Acril black and thined it with MM enamal airbrush thinner. Well it didn't exactly thin it and it took me hours to clean the goopy mess out of my airbrush.

 

[Airframes]

Ah, the wonderful, relaxing, rewarding joys of modelling !
But you got it sorted Mike, and the model is looking good.

 

[mikewint]

To be sure Terry, to be sure. All this concern over color!!!! Youse Guys is rubbing off on me!!! Pretty soon I'll be agonizing over the correct shape and angle of the rudder pedals!!!
Any Who... I be done, well almost, as you can see working on the canopy. A coat of Future...Decals....Flat clear and the bird is officially done.

 

[Zaggy]

I'm going to chip in here, because colour is one thing that I like...

RLM83 has been shown to have been 'Dark Blue'.
RLM82 is 99.9% 'Bright Green'.
RLM81 is the interesting one - this one seems to vary from a chocolate brown, through olive, to a dark green shade, depending upon the paint manufacturer and timeframe (as it seems official chips for this, 82 & 83 were never issued).

The 'green' variants of RLM81 seem to oxidise very quickly differently to the brown variants too.


Dan

 

[Wayne Little]

 

[mikewint]

RLM83 has been shown to have been 'Dark Blue'.

What is your source for this? DUNKLEGRUN is DARK GREEN

Ah yes COLOR, we have been down this particular Can of Worms Road...Ad Infinitum.
In August 1943 (less than a month after the firebombing of Hamburg), after preparations that must have begun sometime earlier, there was a notice announcing the future introduction of RLM 81 and 82, which were to replace RLM 70 and 71. Almost a year later (in July 1944), this change was made official with a Sammelmitteilung or notification. When stocks of existing paint had been depleted, RLM 70 and 71 were to be discontinued and RLM 81 and 82 used instead. If necessary, any surplus quantities were to be mixed: RLM 70 with 82, and RLM 71 with 81.
In August 1944, there was a second set of regulations, Sammelmitteilung Nr. 2, emphasizing that "With the issue of this camouflage guide the industry is expressly forbidden to use any other camouflage types or colours, e.g. in response to special requests from front-line units, than those specified in the camouflage guide." It directed that RLM 65 was to be replaced on the underside of aircraft by RLM 76, no doubt due to the fact that cobalt, its principal coloring pigment, was needed in the production of high-grade steel. RLM 70 was to be used only on propellers, and RLM 74 completely withdrawn, which likely had been phased out by then, as there is no mention of mixing any surplus stock. It was to be replaced by RLM 83, even though there is no surviving directive to this effect. The context suggests that the new color, which is mentioned here for the first time, had been announced months earlier (at least to the paint manufacturers) and already was in service. It presumably was a dark gray-green similar to RLM 74, which, like RLM 70/71, had oxides of chromium as its primary pigment. In increasingly short supply, this important raw material now was needed for the production of jet engines (fittingly, the camouflage colors of the Me 163, Me 262, and He 162 were RLM 81/82/76).
In a simplified scheme of RLM 83/75, these gray and dark-green colors were more suitable for defensive camouflage and still not overly compromised in the air. It is a change that must have occurred one or two months before, perhaps as early as June 1944, when the Allies landed in France and German losses on the ground were beginning to exceed those in the air. By September, the need to conceal land-based aircraft precipitated a shift to an even darker combination of RLM 81/82 over 76 on the undercarriage. RLM 83 no longer was to be produced, although it did continue to be used.
Sammelmitteilung 1 had stated that "Delivery of colour charts for RLM shades 81 and 82 is currently not possible. For this reason there is no acceptance inspection of the paint's shade." There were to be no official descriptions of RLM 81/82 and manufacturers were obliged to describe these colors themselves. Dornier referred to both RLM 81 and 82 as Dunkelgrün; Blohm & Voss described RLM 81 as Olivbraun and RLM 82 as Hellgrün, and later Messerschmitt, as Braunviolett and Hellgrün, respectively. Rather than simply replacing RLM 70/71, it is possible, too, that these colors were reissues of the nearly identical RLM 61/62 that had appeared in the Farbtontafel of 1936 (the first to be issued by the RLM) but withdrawn from service by the beginning of the war. Indeed, official color descriptions were thought to be of secondary importance and only twenty-eight colors had official names, none after RLM 73. Color samples not available at the time a Farbtontafel was printed (or issued after November 1941), such as the desert colors RLM 78 and 79, were represented by paint chips stuck on a blank page.
It should be appreciated that RLM colors did not necessarily match even those applied by the manufacturer or subcontractor at the factory. Paint formulations could vary from one batch to another and colors thinned or combined, especially toward the end of the war and in the field, when supplies became more scarce and conditions for proper application, more difficult. It was not enough that pigments be thoroughly mixed but that nozzle settings and air pressure, viscosity and proper spraying distance, ambient temperature and humidity, surface preparation and drying times all accord to regulation. Once delivered from the factory, colors oxidized, weathered, and faded—especially under the strong Mediterranean sun, where yellow, blues, and grays were particularly susceptible to ultraviolet light.
Color attribution is complicated, too, by the fact that most photographs used in identification are black and white, which themselves could be over or under exposed. With only contrast in shading, different colors can have virtually the same grayscale value. This makes it difficult (especially without a specific color tone as reference) to distinguish between RLM 70/71/73 and RLM 81/82/83. The problem is compounded if orthochromatic film was used, which is sensitive to blue and green light but not to red (which is why it can be processed with a red safelight), and causes shades of blue to appear lighter, and red and yellow darker. Color photographs, which may seem more reliable, are affected by shifts in the dyes of the film, which themselves have different light sensitivity. When published, they are further subject to the vagaries of the printing process, especially if the print is not taken from the original negative but is a copy (or even a copy of a copy). Finally, there is the phenomenon of "scale effect," in which the appearance of color is affected by the perspective in viewing it—the further one is from a plane, the lighter its color appears to be. Particulates in the air from dust and mist introduce a hazy veil that reduces the perceived saturation of colors, some of which are more affected by scale than others, but all tending to fade to neutral gray over distance.

 

[Airframes]

It's looking good Mike, and now I know where model companies got the idea for 'Egg Planes' !

 

[mikewint]

Terry,

 

[rochie]

Looks good Mike

 

[Gnomey]

Nicely done so far Mike!

 

[turbo]

Nice work Mike, got there in the end!

 

[Zaggy]

RLM83 has been shown to have been 'Dark Blue'.

What is your source for this? DUNKLEGRUN is DARK GREEN

Michael Ulm's research into RLM colours - he's done some really good stuff on the late war colours. This is a short ref to the Dark Blue order --> ornets' Nest - RLM 83 Dark Blue by Michael Ullman

I have seen some examples also of oxidised Blue's on things like remnants of Bv float-planes and an Me 110, if memory serves.

Thus, what we think of RLM83, is just the Greener variety of RLM81 (the RLM81 bottle found by Japo in Czech was a distinctly green colour, for example. And Dornier described RLM81 in paint diagrams for the Do335 as 'Dunkelgrün', with no mention of 'Braun'). It doesn't so much change what we end up painting on models (especially fighter types - we're still going to use the same 'colours'), but instead open up a new palette for the twin-engined types like the Bf110, Ju88/188 and other a/c operating over water in the MTO; it's not like I am suggesting we start painting Fw 190D-9's Dark Blue!


Dan

ADDENDUM - and some more references --> Search for ""

 

[mikewint]

The original Mediterranean theatre camouflage scheme for Luftwaffe aircraft was sand(Sandgelb RLM 79), with green(RLM 80) dapple and light blue(Hellblau RLM 78) for the undercarriage. A good example is Werner Schroer's BF-109, Libya 1941. The colors then changed the following year to tan (Sandbraun RLM 79), green(RLM 80) if used, and light blue(Hellblau RLM 78) this paint scheme being used on Karl-Heinz Krahl's aircraft based at San Pietro, Italy April 1942. The intense sunlight raised metal aircraft surface temperatures to cooking levels literally burning the hands of ground crews thus I cannot believe a DARK color like Ullman describes would have been used and in any case he was referring only to the Mediterranean .
Now in the late war due to lack of fuel supplies, German aircraft began spending lots of time on the ground. Rather than worry about being concealed in the air, the RLM became concerned about being spotted on the ground and gave orders for aircraft, both new and existing, be painted in what are referred to by enthusiasts as Late War Greens, RLM 81 Brown Violet, 82 & 83 Dark and Bright Green. Due to communication and manufacturing breakdowns, color chips were never produced. That leaves the colors open to a lot of interpretations . Written descriptions of the colors were written and circulated and color 81 is described as Brown Violet. Brown Violet matches US Army Olive Drab very closely as observed on some captured examples, but has more of a violet hue. RLM 82 & 83 are problematic, at one time it was thought that 82 was Dark Green, closely resembling 71. Several hobby paint manufacturers (like Model Master) produced colors labeled RLM 82 Dunkelgrun (Dark Green). Subsequent research has revealed that 82 is a bright, grassy green and RLM 83 is now believed to be the Dark Green, similar in color to 71. These colors were primarily used on fighter aircraft produced in the last year of the war.
So going back to my original posting:
In August 1944, there was a second set of regulations, Sammelmitteilung Nr. 2, emphasizing that "With the issue of this camouflage guide the industry is expressly forbidden to use any other camouflage types or colours, e.g. in response to special requests from front-line units, than those specified in the camouflage guide." It directed that RLM 65 was to be replaced on the underside of aircraft by RLM 76, no doubt due to the fact that cobalt, its principal coloring pigment, was needed in the production of high-grade steel. RLM 70 was to be used only on propellers, and RLM 74 completely withdrawn, which likely had been phased out by then, as there is no mention of mixing any surplus stock. It was to be replaced by RLM 83, even though there is no surviving directive to this effect. The context suggests that the new color, which is mentioned here for the first time, had been announced months earlier (at least to the paint manufacturers) and already was in service. It presumably was a dark gray-green similar to RLM 74, which, like RLM 70/71, had oxides of chromium as its primary pigment.

 

[parsifal]

very quick, and very smart looking mike. looks terrific. Yours will be a hard act to follow, seeing we are both in the intermediate level. and all......

 

[mikewint]

Michael, thank you, much appreciated, that 1/72 of yours is something I'd not even try. Like Terry, the old fat fingers just don't work like they used to...Scheisse, nothing does any more!!!

 

[mikewint]

Been not paying attention as usual and this one got away from me but my Ta is essentially done

 

[fubar57]

Looking good Mike

 

[Wurger]

I agree. Well done.

 

[Crimea_River]

Good one Mike.