Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Bf109G-14/AS flown by Herbert Maxis

http://www.cptfarrels.com/blog/Bf109G-14AS_Maxis_1200.jpg


White 13 was flown by Herbert Maxis during operation Bodenplatte on January 1, 1945. There's a great number of photos of this aircraft, which doesn't make it much easier to try and interpret the colors. In photos all colors look quite dark while in a few others there's stark contrast between the two upper colors. This contrast makes me believe in a mixed camouflage of RLM 75 and green RLM 81. The high contrast between the white markings and the undersurface color points towards the greenish color rather than the pale RLM 76.

Update!
Photos from the recovery of this aircraft sent to me by RĂ©mi Baudru (Thank you!) shows that this aircraft was painted in greys. The contrast of the colors are greater than a regular 74/75 camo but clearly grey.One can only speculate about these "latewar greys" as they can be seen on more wrecks than this one, but the ligther one could possibly be a faded version of 75, perhaps affected by lack of raw materials or a lower amount of pigments in the paint.  Whether the darker color is RLM 74 or a makeshift replacement following the withdrawal of RLM74 would also remain pure speculation.

This is one of the joys of running this blog - getting new information from all around the world that enables me to make the profiles as accurate as possible.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fantastic work Anders!

This is on my to do list, together with a 'few' other aircraft numbered '13'...
Looking forward to more profiles and of course.....those '13'!

Janne