The next WNW 1:32 aftermarket decal set is #30008 for the Fokker D.VII OAW variant. It gives us a wider choice of subjects to portray than what is in their #32030 kit. Some interesting stuff there.

Link to Item

If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

I quite fancy doing the Lindenberger scheme. What are your findings with this one? I'd like to get it as accurate as possible.

Lets look at some of WNW images and talk about it.


First this image just inside a hangar at Nivelles - post war. Not only has the over coat of brown-tan varnish worn heavily, but the lighter banding around the fuselage has variations in tone. Sun bright day



Next look at it in bright sunlight, again at Nivelles post war. The lighter banding areas still show strong variations and wear. Overcast, hazy and rainy day.

The last image was cropped from this image I used as a header to my diorama project. here.



I loaned this and several other photos to Greg VanWyngarden several years ago.

Next this image is a cropped verion of this next image.



The first Fokker D.VII in the image is Ltn. Alfred Lindenberger's Fok.D.VII(OAW)4453/18

Here is a much earlier shot with Ltn. Lindenberger in the cockpit.

Here it is from the other side on the same day as the line up at Nivelles. I know because the next image is the uncropped version.

Now for a bit of photo interpretation here.

In my opinion the oblique banding (sash banding) were black and white originally. The lighter paint here appears to be thinly or unevenly applied and brush strokes seem evident. Noting the overcoat of varnish appears to be flaking off and worn. When freshly applied the tinted - translucent varnish was meant to add weatherproofing and it also subdued anything it covered. The nose, tail unit and the fuselage cross appear brighter and there is a slight border around the fuselage crosses. Often the national markings were added using an oil based paint. The fuselage crosses either were masked or repainted. Depending on the tint of the original varnish I see this as a more brownish tint over hand brushed translucent flat white and flat black. This tint would cover the wings as well. In the British venacular. "She probably looked a bit knackered".

Very interesting Stephen,

I am planning on doing this scheme as well as Jasta Boelcke is sort of my theme.

Is there any anecdotal evidence regarding the coloring of 4453/18?

I have seen it depicted as black/yellow before WNWs interpretation, so I am curious where that idea might have come from.

I gather then you would have it as a sort of dirty white in its "per-knackered" condition.

Cheers,

Bo Monroe

Greetings Bo,

Actually it was at one time thought to be green & black. But it was changed in a popular Osprey publication on the Jasta 2 "Boelcke" book. The truth is its just a guess on the approximation of colour shades in orthochromatic film. The Metheun handbook was designed with this kind of interpretation. But it is still just a guess.

The late Dan San Abbott wrote:
". . .I have looked at several photographs of this machine. The dark stripe where it crosses the horizontal arm of the fuselage cross does not match the tonal value of the black in the cross. It may be another color, red or orange would produce that grey value. However in studying the design, it is a ribbon that diagonally crosses the fuselage immediately in front of the cross. I then took a look at the ribbon on the Würtemberg Gold Military Merit Medal, it is a bright yellow ribbon with narrow black stripes near the edges. I must agree with Greg (VanWyngarden), the fuselage sash is yellow with narrow black stripes inboard of the edges the stripes fore and aft of the sash are equal width stripes about 100 mm wide in black and yellow. What an interesting scheme!"

Thanks Stephen,

Like so many of these puzzles, I'm left not being sure what to think.

Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. I agree that white is plausible, but I don't quite see how yellow is ruled out based on the photos. At least pale yellow as is often depicted?

As for DSA /GvW interpretation of the association with the Würtemberg GMMM -- is there any connection with Lindenberger and this award or province?

Cheers,

-- Bo

Here is a bit of fun on the subject of D.4635/18 "U.10".

". . .An ancient issue of the American Aviation Historical Society Journal had a piece about Paul Garber working late one night by himself in his old pre-NASM office in the 1950's. He heard a strange groaning, growl then a shriek. It spooked him, but he got up to investigate. This led him down the hallways to where U.10 was sitting. The sound had come from from her fuselage fabric suddenly ripping, her old brittleness giving in to the changing weather inside the old building. . ."

Here is a good bit on Heinz von Beaulieu-Marconnay.



http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1144.htm

"Today, the last vestige of fictional war. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

November 9, 1918, two days before the WW-I Armistice. The place, a tiny American airstrip near Verdun -- some sheds and three pilots playing cards. One of those pilots later became Governor of Maine, another, Vice President of Eastman Kodak. Now they hear a sputtering engine. A Fokker D.VII drops out of the low gray clouds and lands. They run out with pistols drawn and capture the German pilot. He's Heinz von Beaulieu-Marconnay, a Huguenot aristocrat. They invite him in for a collegial shot of cognac before they send him off to be processed. It remains unclear why he'd landed there.

The Fokker D.VII was eventually boxed up and sent to America. It wound up in the Smithsonian Institution. In the 1970's the museum restored it to its 1918 condition -- including a mysterious marking on its side: the letters U.10 painted three feet tall.

I was studying in the Smithsonian back in 1970 and was given the task of writing a museum label for the plane. I knew the Fokker D.VII was the best German fighter plane of the war. But what on earth did U.10 stand for? As I looked, the plot thickened. Two weeks before the Armistice, the pilot's brother, a German ace named Oliver von Beaulieu-Marconnay, died of wounds after he was shot down. His plane had carried the equally mysterious letters, 4D.

And why had Heinz landed? Was he broken by his brother's death - saving himself by surrendering? That was current Smithsonian thinking. I went looking for the meaning of the insignia and for the circumstances that'd brought Heinz's plane to an Allied airstrip on that overcast day late in the war.

I located the now-aging American interrogator who'd talked with the pilot just after he'd landed. It turns out they'd become close friends. After th e war he'd been godparent to the flyer's children. As to defection? Not a chance. The pilot was lost, his engine was dying and the Allied planes were in their hangars. After the war Heinz became an important figure in the Luftwaffe. He was captured again in WWII and died in a Russian concentration camp.

I also found the pilot's children. His daughter was living on Long Island. His son did drafting for Messerschmitt. Neither could say what Heinz's U.10 or Olivier's 4D stood for. Finally the daughter wrote to her aunt who said both boys had joined the cavalry when war broke out. Olivier went to the Fourth Dragoons, hence the 4-D. Heinz had ridden with the Tenth Uhlans. When they had the chance to fly, they took their cavalry insignias with them.

So my quest had taken me into a twilight zone, a last vestige of 19th century views of war, the thin tissue of a chivalrous war, a gentleman's war, a war that never was. Soon after the Armistice my father, also a pilot, flew over the empty trenches of Verdun. He wrote home about terrible destruction, far as the eye could see. He saw no chivalry, no shots of cognac, down there. This war, like all wars, had really been about killing people. I'd only caught a glimpse of a few decent people -- trying to make it otherwise.

I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work."