Hi there

In the course of packing my stash ready to move Castle Aeroscale to its new home, I came across Flashback's Aviatik Berg D.1 in the colours of Frank Linke Crawford. The lozenge pattern is described as "Austro-Hungarian" type - but the colours are amazingly vivid - brick red, orange-yellow, olive green, pale blue, dark blue and off-white...

So, 2 questions:

1. Was Linke-Crawford's aircraft finished in a standard scheme? and
2. AreFlashback's colours remotely accurate?

It looks a very tempting kit to build, having been buried (almost literally) at the bottom of a pile for about 10 years!

All the best

Rowan

Greetings our "lord high imperious poohbah and holder of the key to the door of light and good fellowship."

A. Linke-Crawford's machine was in factory colours except his personal marking was in black not red.
B. The colours are shall we say remotely close. I think that member Louis can help. He has a build thread on this kit I will dig up the URL and send it to you.

Cheers Stephen

I'll look forward to seeing the link.

I opened the box expecting fairly standard lozenges (albeit probably in iffy colours) and, instead, it was a case of "Holy Cow! Where are my sunglasses!"

So, with the personal marking, does that mean a black "L" on the red band - or both black?

All the best

Rowan

Both black. Anything red in this kit's decals should be black .

Cheers Stephen

It's very tempting to make this an early candidate for the workbench once I'm settled again.

All the best

Rowan

That is a sweet looking paint scheme. Personally I think the black will look better anyway. It will stand out better against the madness. Historically AND aesthetically pleasing!

Hi
Oh the colours, they always make headaches. All the Lozenge or hexagon pattern colourschemes on Austro Hungarian produced aircraft are fairly speculative. In difference to German productions, the A/H hexoganl patterns have been handpainted in the factory. There have been only very few examples of printed fabric.

What colours have been used? A big question with almost no answer. We have records wich colours have been ordered or better have been available but what mixtures have been made is in the field of speculation. In fact...as there are no originals existing all interpretations are fictional. In my opinion these decals are far to bright. There have been used colours like brick red... olive green ...ockre...light and dark blue and so on but as mixed colours we absolutely were not that bright and finaly all this paintwork was varnished. This varnish had a strong tendency to darken with a redish/brown tone in the sunlight.

Linke Crawford`s Aviatik Berg D.I. was a Lohner produced craft and the unit markings have been red bands on the fuselage with white outlined letters. Sorry that my comment is not really helpful but this confusion about colours is the truth. There was a book published from Japo in 2002 "Aviatik D.I & D.II ind the colour drawings in this book seem for me very realistc. These artists did a fine job in interpretation.

Many thanks Peter

I remember from my days at art college that we were taught that modern synthetic pigments are far brighter than what was available even in the early 20th century, so I'll definitely knock back the colours a bit with a tinted varnish coat.

But, red or black for the unit / personal markings? The jury seems to be firmly out... heeeelp!

All the best

Rowan

Sorry Peter,

Not red. We have diary excerpts from a member of the unit noting that the unit marking was a black band. Red was not used as it tended to match the colours of the camouflage from a distance. One more comment here.

The study of Austro-Hung camouflage colours was presented in the Cross & Cockade Great Britain (now international) journal by the late Dr. Martin O'Connor. Since he did his intern work in Vienna he also did extensive work on his hobby Austro-Hung history. He is the one that found and documented the original pattern for the sworl camouflage. I will see if I can find the relavant reference.

Hi there

Diary excepts, complete with expanations, sound like a dream come true for colour historians. I wish we were fortunate enough to have more such things, even for later conflicts...

All the best

Rowan

You find history in unique places. The texile mills in Austria were the obvious choices for fabric manufacturers. One such company manufactured carpets and it was a pattern from their 1913-14 catalog that became the sworl pattern camouflage.

Here is another Aeroscale member that was thinking about doing this bird.
Terri's thread

Sorry about these colours. Martin O´Connor did a great work. But the records at state archives in Vienna and later studies do mention that his colour interpretations do not have been correct in all cases. I have ti appologize but his work is a little bit outdated by newer studies.

These studies made under goevernment of historians and professional restaurators came to divergent results.
As unit markings there was used black,red or white, for stripes on fuselage, rudder and wheels .

Flik 60J as recods say did use red there have been several neighbour units with similar markings they did use black and also white. And to make confusion perfect they did change colours with the arrival of new fighter planes.
Sorry for this confusion, but the deeper we get into our studies here the mor we know that we know almost nothing.

Stephen that is true, that printed fabric was this later on Albatros D.II used swirl pattern...really psychodelic.
The company printing this fabric is Backhausen and is still existing. They also did experiments with hexagonal patterns but they have been used on airframs only in very few examples ( arround 5 pieces).
Backhausen also manufactured a wide range of fabrics for military use...mainly for camouflaged tents.

Hi,

I hope that the band is black!!! If it's not black, it's very very dark red.....but I think it's black (look the photo). Most of historians say that it is black.

The "L" on the wing is white outlined letters and nothing in the middle (on my berg it's black...).

The color's decal ? I don't know. I don't use them because it's too difficult to use it.
I used colours which could be the Linke-Crawford's aircraft colours . The only austro Hungarian surviving plane with hexagon pattern was repainted (after Dr. Martin O'Connor studies it), so.... use the colours which please you.

You can read that, a lot of different things:

http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/camouflage-markings/35183-colours-my-aviatik-berg-d1.html

If you need I can sent to you (you or or somebody else) the part3: Marking and camouflage of Austro-Hungarian aircraft in WW1 By Dr. O'Connor.


http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/models/35666-aviatik-berg-d1-paint.html

If you need something, photo, documents, etc; ask me please.


Regards.

Huberlu

Hi Louis

I just looked at your build - that's fantastic work on the interior!

You're right - the band certainly does look black in the photo. But if you enlarge it and compare the tonal value of the "L", it seems rather lighter than the band. It may be an optical illusion, but could the "L" have been red? - I have found it represented that way in a proflie:

http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww1/f/176/175/1/10

All the best

Rowan

Thank you.

I don't know if it's red but I never read that anyway. It is difficult to interpret black and white photograph...The "L" could be dirty?

Hi Louis

I hope you don't mind me pinching the pic from your thread on The Aerodrome, but I just spotted a very good reason for not using the kit decals:





Apart from the obvious question over the correct colours, what's clear from looking at your photo is that the real lozenges were irregular in size and shape. The kit's are all identical.

Of course, that just confuses matter even further! But I'm glad I checked before PM-ing Mal to see if he fancied doing a custom-set of hexagonal Miracle Masks!

All the best

Rowan

Mal! now thats the ticket!

Hi Stephen

Well, it would be... if the lozenges were consistent in shape. As it is, they'd be a nightmare for him to produce. Some of them seem to overlap and the result isn't even hexagonal.

Do you know if there are more photos of this aircraft? I'm starting to think we might be onto a totally unexpected little Aeroscale research topic here to get a truer idea of impression of the colour scheme. e.g. I'm still seeing a tonal difference between the L" and its surrounding band, so it'd be great to cross-check any other available shots for that alone.

All the best

Rowan

Hi

I know 3 photos of this plane and only the left side. Your photo show us regular hexagone and other plane ( not Linke Crawford's plane) show regular hexagone too I think.

Regards

Hi Louis

Well, actually, as I said, it's your photo - but the pattern looks very irregular to me.



The shape of the lozenges aren't at all consistent - totally the opposite of the Flashback decals. I'd love it to be a regular pattern, because that would be easier to replicate (by masks or decals), but that's just not what I can see...

I think where we do agree is - don't use the kit decals, whether for ease or accuracy...

All the best

Rowan

Sorry, I thought that you spoke about the size of hexagons (my English is very poor).

The alternation of colours follows a regular order:



Something like that on the wings too.

A+

Hi Louis

I see what you mean. I think I was misinterpretting the lozenge immediately to the right of the base of the "L", where the shape is harder to make out. There also seems to be a diagonal scan-line that causes a little disruption.



Many thanks for clearing it up.

All the best

Rowan

Here is the Jim Dietz painting I mentioned.

Hi Stephen

I see a dreaded Red-X there...

All the best

Rowan