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Luft 46 Colour Camouflage Applications, Part 2: Fighters and Heavy Fighters

part 2: fighters and heavy fighters

The Experiment

There has been much written about, for example, the mysterious “Sky” or RLM 84 colours and other late war colours that are generally regarded as new or non-standard. Some scorn all such references as false information while others truly believe these shades actually existed. It must be said that there is no record of the RLM issuing directives about any shades considered to be RLM 84 or any other “new” shades beyond RLM83. But there have been enough reports and recorded sightings to strongly suggest some, if not all, of these colours were actually used. So I think there is some truth in the matter especially after the results of the first phase of this little experiment.

It was something Rowan (Armorama member Merlin) said that got me thinking, i.e. “it’s probable that meager supplies of correct RLM colours were stretched by mixing them, for example, with plain old white."

I decided to carry out an experiment to simulate what a ground crew, responsible for applying camouflage to aircraft, might have been forced to do. The experiment, using Humbrol enamels, was not greatly controlled for two reasons- 1) I wanted to do this as a rough guide, and 2) If it is to be presumed these colours did find their way onto aircraft, the circumstances in which they would have been applied would be far from controlled.

Basically I took each official late war RLM colour and mixed set percentages of RLM21 white and a second batch with RLM 76 Hellblau instead of white. In most cases, shades very similar to the Sky colours were achieved. Based on the findings, I made the colour charts you see to the right. Please regard these as a guide only as they are computer generated.

The next phase of the experiment is to again take standard late war RLM colours and, this time, add set percentages of black RLM22. After this I will try mixing RLM colours with themselves. Results will be published in Part 3 of this series.