Greetings Matt,
As you know that in the series "Operation Butterfly" by Hardesty, Hastings and Toelle that they identified four specific Spad XIII manufacturers from the list I posted above. These were the Bleriot early and late schemes. Then there was Kellner and Bernard. S.A.F.C.A camouflage was identified tenatively with Nungesser's machine.

Delving into the Spad VII the book by Tomasz G. seems to cover this reasonably well (Alan Toelle was the consultant on this publication as well.)

Alan's unpublished research documents concerning the surviving Spad XIII airframes are the general specs on known hallmarks of their manufacturers but do not go into detailed drawings of the camouflage.

Levasseur camouflage can be deduced from the photo image of the factory but it is not complete.

Then there is the whole other topic of rebuilts, salvaged and replacement components. The final assumption is that remaining manufacturers stayed pretty close to the SPAD co. spec ...but... Alan is doing more research and I have been informed there is more to come.

My model from the Hangar Queen thread will be of the Bleriot early type.

Stephen,

Thanks for refreshing my memory about the SPAD VII tome. I completely forgot about that one. I've been hoping and praying that Tomasz follows up with one on the XIII.

I will also have to check the Project Butterfly issues.

See, when you age, the mind IS the first thing to go!

With the 95% completion of the Hanagr Queen subject we come to its camouflage here. The largest change from early to late scheme was the black foot print on the pilot's right side of the fuselage was removed and replaced with a beige worm shape.

Here is what they started with;


http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/spadxiii.htm

Here is what they wound up with.

http://www.nasm.si.edu/imagedetail.cfm?imageID=1165

http://www.wwi-models.org/app/sbj/srch/Macn.php?action=uArchShowCollG&collGId=306&subjId=325

Now that we have had a chance for the French 5 colour camouflage to be presented lets go back from 1917 -18 to 1915 -16 and discuss the two and three colour camouflage the French employed on several aircraft types. First there is the Nieuport 11 & 16. The image enclosed portrays a single view of an old Stereo-opticon. A view finder that you hold up to your eyes with twin glass plates images. Again, colour film was in its infancy.

This is a picture of Jean Chaput and the Nieuport 16 he used between april and July 1916 at N31.

With Eduard's re-issue of their Nieuport 16 the questions of what camouflage types were applied has risen. While there are several websites I could begin quoting we will also include photo evidence.

Though I have posted this before here is the URL for a website called the Nieuport Pages.

The great thing about this site is one the comparitive colour profiles and the serial batch listings noting the relative time of contract order or the noted time at the front.

Usually the early French multi-colour camouflage scheme is noted as employing two colours. The Nieuport 16 posted earlier is easily seen as having 3 (maybe four ) colours on the fuselage. tail to nose dark grn, light grn, chocolat or dark brown, red brown. The chocolate or dark brown may actually be dk. grn.

For the average interest in Colour images from WWI.

Now from Belgium we have a Nieuport (11 ?) photographed inflight.

Here is a quick few comments concerning the first colour camouflage applications from an earlier thread here at Aeroscale. Click here>>> Little boy blue

From Greg VanWyngarden, "...Here's a bit more evidence from the highly acclaimed and respected book "René Dorme et Joseph Guiget, La Guerre aérienne de deux As" by Marc Chassard, Editions Aux Arts, page 167: "Nieuports type X, XI, XVI, and XVII, according to the time, have worn various colors. Initially clear-doped for types X and the first types XI built in 1915, the first coloured coatings appear at the end of the year. Some types XI produced at that time are described as being entirely light blue."

A photo of Guynemer's Nieuport XI No 836 on the same page is captioned: "This close-up view of Guynemer's XI N 836 shows that the aeroplane is covered with clear(claire - light) paint, scaled in places; an example of light blue Nieuports."

Greetings all;
For a very good source on camouflage on Nieuports I highly recommend,

"PUBLISHED to coincide with the US theatrical release of the new Flyboys motion picture, Albatros Productions, Ltd., - World leaders in WWI aeronautical publishing - present the true story of the famed Lafayette Escadrille’s Nieuport flyers.

The enthralling narrative is supported by over 55 archive photos and 11 pages of authentic colour profiles illustrating the iconic Lafayette Nieuports as never before. Recent research by leading authorities in the field such as Alan Toelle and Bernard Klayelé have resulted in Bob Pearson’s 35 all-new revisonist profiles of these classic aeroplanes. Detailed captions accompany the illustrations and this unique Special also includes 8 pages of 1:32 scale Nieuport 11/16/17/21 scale drawings for modellers of Special Hobby and Hobbycraft kits along with a stunning cover by Robert Karr! . . ."

(Some of my comments concerning the French Multi coloured camouflage have roots in this fine monograph.)

http://www.windsockdatafilespecials.co.uk/nieuport-flyers-of-the-lafayette-47-p.asp

Greetings all;

Since the drawings in the Nieuport book I mentioned are in 1/32 the publisher note that the eight center pages are meant to be detached by bending up the book's staples and bending them back in place. The plans are complete and unbroken except for some deleted items for clarity in side views.

Here is a bit of fun for you guys and gals of Aeroscale. This has not been released anywhere in print except in the "Nieuport Flyers of the Lafayette" but a letter from Victor Chapman (10 May 1916 ) to his mother describes the aircraft he was flying at the time as being Nieuports with four colours of camouflage earth tones. Two browns a light and a dark and two greens a light and a dark.

Also from another source "steel" metal fittings of French aircraft frame works were the same blue as the French steel helmets of their WWI infantry.

Greetings all;

Just note of caution here. I have been asked by several members here ". . .Did the French use aluminum dope in their colour pigments of the early Nieuport 1916 camouflage . . ."

This is in reference of course to the 1917 - 1918 Spad 5 colour camuflage spken of at the beginning of the thread. The answer is "NO" French camouflage pigmented dopes did not start carrying aluminum powder until very late 1917. None of the Nieuport 11 or 16 types had them. It was straight earth tone pigments for their camouflage.

Since they were apart of the overall colour scheme I asked those in the know about edge tapes. This response deals strictly with the Nieuport 11 & 16 airframes as the previous few replies.

"Bon Jour Stefan,
The closest thing to empirical evidence is a piece of interplane strut from a Nieuport flown by Guynemer. It has blue tape binding. The color is basically the same as what I call horizon blue. Such a color would photograph lighter than the uppersurface camouflage and darker than the undersurface, whether light blue or clear doped. In my opinion, the edge was painted a contrasting color. On clear-doped surfaces, the dope was covered with a coat of oil-based varnish. The camouflage of that time was also an oil-based product, generically known as Ripolin (a brand name). Gertrude Stein reported that Picasso used Ripolin instead of artists colors because it was a lot less expensive. I really can't see how they would attach a tape with oil based paint. It had to have been masked and painted.

In the beginning, it may have been intended to protect the clear-doped fabric from the sun at the highly-stressed edges. That is merely a hypothesis with no evidence whatsoever. When they started camouflaging the planes, they probably kept up the practice for its aesthetic effect.

Such contemporary artists renditions and autochrome photos are inconclusive as to the color of the edges. They merely appear gray. Of course, colors other than blue or black may have been used. But if they used blue on the strut bindings, it is likely that they used that color elsewhere. . . "

Greetings all I can tell you now that as with the Spad multi-colour camouflage I want to show examples using scale models. I am working on 3 Nieuport 16 types. Two of these are for this thread. Rigging to commence by this next Thursday. I want to show machines that has gone through several owners and one has had a progression of about 4 paint schemes.

Greetings all;
The rigging is complete on these two Nieuport 16 kits and I may get lucky an be able to do some photo images on Wednesday. I will be presenting Nieuport 16 N1131 and N1208. You can see a typical Nieuport 16 in the Weekend build thread (N977). These two I have chosen to do for this thread have had several owners and an several component replacements.
N977

N1131

N1208

Here is N977 note how the edges of the colours have been feathered or appear sprayed now.

Here is my build of Nieuport 16 N1131 as flown by Cpl Johnson of the Lafayette Esc. N.124. This machine had gone through two pilots by this time in 1916.

Here is my build of Nieuport 16 N 1208 as flown by Cpl. Paul Pavelka (the personal insignia of entwined letters P & V has yet to be applied .) This machine has gone through three pilots and at least 3 -4 major repairs and component replacements.

Just bringing this up for a fellow modeler.

is that me

Thanks Stephen.I had some struggle with the paint for this one. Someone told me that White Ensign Enamel have pre french colours, never checked this out.
I found some mixes on the net for this 5 colour scheme with some silver added in the paints. That got me interested to try so just check out the Nieuport thread and see for you´r self if you like it. The mix is for Humbrolpaints.

Dark Green
1 part #92
1 part #30
1 part#11

Ligth green
1 part #92
1 part #102
1 part #90
2 parts #11

Dark Brown
2 parets #29
1 part #60
1 part #33
1 part #11

Beige
1 part #94
1 part #72
1 part #90
2 part #11

Black
1 part #33
1 part #11

Click Here.



Larsa Q

Greetings Larsa! Actually I brought it up for legendasboy but if you can glean help here thats a good thing! Model On!

And model on it is

Larsa Q

Stephen , i really enjoyed this read . I was not aware that aluim..was mix in with the paint . Lars , thanks for the paint guide it will be very helpful with my future builds .
I do have one guestion , the tapeing around the flying surfaces was this in different colours ?
Cheers

Hi Terri
I´m not the right man to ask, i´m more modeller than referencereader.



Larsa q