o.k. i have got my hands on a genuine 1960's airfix hannover kit, now i want to do it in a lozenge scheme, and i do already have a pegasus four colour upper and lower decal sheet. is this appropriate? or does it fall in to the later five colour scheme? also how would the insides of the cockpit finished? a plain colour or would it show through lozenged? there are two nice crew figures included, so up to a point i don't have to go too mad on the internal detailing.

Phil!!!
It is soooo good to hear from you! Actually the 5 colour came first in 1917. The four colour came to the front post April 1918.

Most Hannover CL.II, III, IIIa wings rudder and elevators were covered in 5 colour from the factory. Early CL.II & some CL.III had an overall light blue scheme.

The fuselage was plywood and hand painted lozenges on the outside were larger than the printed fabric on the wings. As the lozenges went back to the tail unit they got smaller and were usually several shades out of tune with the fabric covered rudder and elevators. There is some thought by those in the know that another colour (lt. blue?) was oversprayed thinly over the whole fuselage lozenge scheme to mute the colours even further. The interior was varnished ply.

The center-section of the top wing was plywood covered as well and the upper surface was painted very similar to the fuselage. Its underside is thought to be varnished plywood - not painted.

Here are some good references.

Cross & Cockade USA ;
Vol. 3, #2 Pp.124-137, 1962 Summer .
Vol. 9, #3 Pp.257-262, 1968 Fall.
Vol. 10,#1 Pp. 62- 65, 1969 Spring.
Vol. 14,#1 Pp. 65- 71, 1973 Spring.
Vol. 18.#3 Pp.230-235, 1977 Fall.
Vol. 19,#3 Pp.266-274, 1978 Fall.
Vol. 19,#4 Pp.360-369, 1978 Winter.
Vol. 20.#2 Pp. 97-106, 1979 Summer.
Vol. 22, #3 Pp.266-271, 1980 Fall.
Vol. 24, #1 Pp. 83- 84, 1982 Spring.
Vol. 25, #3 Pp. 1983 Fall.
German Army Air Service by R. Rimell, Vintage Warbirds # 2, Osprey Pub.1985.
Hannover CL.II-IIIa by R. Rimell, Windsock Datafile #23.
Pictorial History of the German Army Air Service by A.Imrie, Allan Pub. 1971.
World War One in the Air by Rimell, Arms & Armour Press, Warbirds #9, 1988.

Note: Dan San would like me to add that his and Rick Duiven's book "Schlachtflieger!" has a large collection of multiview drawings concerning theses colour schemes. I hear it is a great book but I don't have it as yet.

cheers stephen!
varnish ply on the inside, thats pretty easy, hand painted lozenge on the fusalage- not impossible, but i'll need to have a think about how to do that!
while posting this i actually opened the header card and theres a quite comprehensive set of painting instructions,that talk about the fusalage being "daubed with small patches of dark green, mauve and brown colours which resulted in a generally dark greenish appearance"
how does that sound?
i ask because it would be a bit easier that hand painting lozenge!

Hey Phil its your model! But let me post a short reminder about kit instructions.

From "The Laws of Modeling 101"

Law #16.) ". . .The kit instructions, may be very interesting, but are 95 % of the time irrelevant. . ."

The full Monty here

thats a good point!
i think this will be one of those "it took longer to research than build!"

Hi Phil.
That kits older than you!,,lol
Im sure you'll make a great job of it and Im looking forward to seeing your progress pics.
Strange how both of our last 2 builds were P47's and now we are building old Airfix biplanes.Ive recently made a start on the old Tiger Moth(again).
Keep posting
Nige

Cor I remember that kit, I got it free when I joined the Airfix club, many many years ago.
If I remember correctly I hand painted the lozenge camo (badly I might add ).
Looking forward to seeing this one get done.
Andy

Below are examples of other modelers works.

Here are two of the Eduard 1/48 kits.




Here is the 1/72 kit with 5 colour night camouflage

USAF Museum Halberstadt

what am i getting into!!!
on the brighter side i found some exellent walkaround pics and drawings in my copy of janes fighting aircraft of WW1 published in 1920, a lot of the german pictures in it are from captured machines that were extensively photographed and had drawings made for evaluation against allied types (and its nice for us nearly 100 years later) problem is this one is in british markings and its possible all the lozenge has been overpainted, it just looks a dark single colour in my pics.

*edit* i tell a lie! after lookingat the pics with my eyes actually open its quite obviously got a lozenge on the fusalage, but the wings are catching the light making them look a single colour

Perhaps now you understand I had no problem selling it to you!

Cheers, Nico

P.s. good luck, I ' be following the thread.

Oh yes,

A Belgian fellow builder of us is doing one on line at this moment. He entered a drawing of a version of which I wonder if it is painted lozenge....

On Dutch "Modelbrouwers"

Cheers, Nico

hi nico! your friends version is the elusive boxed re-issue! i have a few ideas about painting the fusalage, possibly by way of a mask, i did lozenge an aircraft a few years back using masks, it was'nt brilliant but i'm sure i can improve on what i did before.
and while we're on this site one for you and one for your mate!

Yep,

That's the latest boxed issue, but more or less the same boxart as a late '70's or early '80's boxed issue. I got one of these as well. I even had an Eduard 1/48 scale one untill recently but that English friend of mine wanted it so badly I traded it with him for something else. Is there anything else more interesting than a 1/48 scale Eduard Hannover , some may wonder !?

Greetings, Nico