MISTER KIT ACRYLIC COLORS GERMAN W.W. I

Series 2- WWI German colours

The five Albatross colors we've featured were used for the camouflaged areas of these fighters before the use of the well-known 4 or 5 color lozenge printed fabric system. 

The first Albatross D.I 's were camouflaged on upper flying surfaces with Green and Red Brown.  The D.I. 436/16, Albatross introduced the 3-terrain camouflage system, adding Pale Green to the others two colors. 

But this was also the same camouflage being used by French machines at the time.   So the Idflieg (Inspektion der Fliegertruppen) ordered that all ACFT factories change the camouflage in April 1917,  from the Red-Brown to Mauve in order to avoid mis-identification mistakes between pilots.  The Idflieg also eliminated the Pale Green color  from that date on.

Green was also used for metal areas on the nose of some airplanes and Pale Blue was used for all undersurfaces.

The Fokker-duo were used primarily on Dr.I tri-planes.  Turquoise was the base-color of first production machines (like the well-known Werner Voss

tri-plane) underneath the famous Olive streaked camouflage, applied with a 3 cm. wide brush.  Turquoise was also the color for all undersurfaces, wing and landing gear struts.  Later production Dr.I's used a Clear Doped Linen for a base coat underneath the Olive Streaking.

Olive was used also for cowling and wings of E.V/D.VIII fighters and for streaking camouflage of the first D.VII's, this time over Clear Dope Linen (like the later Dr.I production machines).

Light Grey was used on many German machines for wing and landing struts, on metal areas on the nose and it was one of the colors of the camouflaged Pfalz (D.XII, D.XV etc.).

Sky Blue was used overall on some two-seat airplanes, like Albatross C.III, Roland C.II and Hannover Cl.IIIa.

Like other countries, linen undersurfaces of day operating machines were usually left clear-doped.This kind of finish was also typical of the complete airframes of pre-war and 1915 military aeroplane's.