The Strange Story of the Red Focke-Wulf Ta-152

[Kirby Morgan]

You remember, right, that story from 1939, when at its combat debut, the newborn Supermarine Spitfire engaged in battle and shot down some friendly Hurricanes mistaken for enemies? You don't remember it? Well, I'll start another discussion later.
Well,during the Second World War, several pilots tried to find a solution to this long-standing problem and did so by taking the simplest route: painting their planes in bright colors, so they could beimmediately recognized and distinguished from the rest. Here comesour idol of the day, Lieutenant Colonel (Obersleutnant) and alsocaptain of JG 301, Fritz Aufhammer: it was March 22, 1945, when "our"Fritz took off from Stendal heading for the Luftwaffe technicalcenter at Rechlin, about 150 km east of the starting point.There,a group of experts was supposed to meet Aufhammer to discuss with thepilot the technical reasons for the continuous delays that preventedthe plane from entering active service with JG 301, with Aufhammerand his pilots itching to bring into action the latest jewel of theFocke-Wulf dynasty, considered by many to be a necessary aircraft capable of turning the tide of a war that already seemed lost.

Giventhe novelty that the Ta-152 represented in those last chaotic days ofthe war and the quick trigger of the anti-aircraft units on theground trying to defend what remained of the glorious Third Reich,Aufhammer requested that the plane he was supposed to fly be painteda bright red-orange to avoid being mistaken for an Allied plane and thus targeted by the very dangerous FlaK... Thepilot's request was granted, and the plane was completely painted ina special color that closely resembled the color of Manfred VonRichtofen's famous Fokker Dr.1, the Red Baron.

 

[Wurger]

Again I would like to remind that's the international forum and the English is the required language. Please translate your text and edit the post with the one in the English.

 

[Kirby Morgan]

However,on this point the sources are uncertain, because while on one handthere is talk of a "red-orange paint," others claim that thiscolor was nothing more than the anti-rust primer that Focke-Wulf usedon its planes, including the regular FW-190s, and that therefore thisTa-152, rather than being painted red-orange, was actually a strippedplane. In any case,Theresult of the whole matter was a Ta-152 with an exaggeratedappearance, enhanced by a color similar to Alfa Romeo red and perhapsalso for this reason much more like a racing car.

 

[Crimea_River]

Nice model. I've seen various discussions on this scheme, ranging from Jerry Crandall obtaining sworn statements from a couple of surviving members of JG301 attesting to its authenticity to others claiming that it was all a big joke. A shame no pics exist.

 

[fubar57]

I went through five Ta-152 books and found one profile by, as Andy mentioned, Jerry Crandall. A book by Claes Sundin has a profile and this to say

 

[Weizenbrot]

It is definitely an interesting scheme, although its existence can only proved by people's wording.

As a modeller, this scheme is also in my "to do list", but I just have so many questions on it:

If it was a last minute decision, how did the crew find time to do a overall spray? We all know that some experimental aircraft like Me 163 has orange paint scheme, but that was done in factory. Change scheme of a delivered plane means lots of work, remove some of the original paints, cover some parts sensitive to paints such as the canopy and tires, etc.

How did they find so many orange paints? What is the RLM number of it? Could it be RLM23 used on JG301's Defence of the Reich band?

What's fate of this datum aircraft? Was the paint recovered to normal scheme after this trip? It doesn't make any sense to me to keep it as all other Ta-152s had the normal late war scheme.

I guess this scheme will be kept as a mystery until some pictures or wreck founded.

 

[Capt. Vick]

Well said

 

[MIflyer]

The first operational combat flight of the ME-163 also featured a Red Baron paint job. It was done deliberately by the factory people and not at the request of the pilot, who was not pleased, saying that it would be for only one flight.

The flight was a operational failure but an engineering success. They found that the ME-163 had only two speeds, Too Fast and Too Slow. The pilot attempted to sneak up on a couple of P-47's and found that lowest throttle setting was too slow and trying to go faster led to getting into compressibility problems. The P-47's never even knew they were being followed. So they found they had to climb above the bombers, shut off the engine, dive on the target and then fire the rocket back up and climb above them again.

The mid-80's Testors release of the old Hawk Me-163 featured the red paint scheme.

 

[MIflyer]

This issue of the magazine is available for free download at Archive.org.