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Thread: Colors and Markings: Introduction

  1. #1

    Default Colors and Markings: Introduction

    Welcome to the Colors and Markings subforum!

    The purpose of this subforum (as you might expect) is to discuss the historical colors and markings used on aircraft covered by the Wings of War/Wings of Glory game line, including WWI and WWII but by extension the inter-war period and beyond. Paint schemes and markings used by nations, units, and individual pilots are fair game. Topics that fall outside the area of colors and markings should be posted in the Hobby Room or other forums, including but not limited to:
    • Pictures of repainted or newly-painted miniatures are usually more appropriate in the Painting Showcase, unless the picture supports a question about color or markings.
    • Surface preparation, aircraft mounting, propeller disks, painting techniques (such as the use of airbrushes), etc. are best left to the Hobby Room or other subforums.
    • As this forum focuses on historical colors and markings, fantasy schemes and markings (as cool as they are) should live in the Hobby Room.
    • Questions about decals can live here or another forum, depending on whether they are focus on the colors and markings themselves or on more technical questions like decal application techniques.

    As with all the forums and subforums on the wingsofwar.org site, please be mindful of copyright restrictions and fair use.

    None of the threads should be aimed at direct promotion of a product. If you are involved in paint or decal production, it would certainly be interesting to hear how your company does color matching, but this isn't the place to tell everyone why your paints are better than all your competitors'.

    While the goal of this subforum is to act as reference and guidance material, it is well known that there are more variables and unknowns in the areas of color and markings than there are hard facts. See the stickied thread, "Color: Why We'll Never Get It Exactly Right" for additional details. The goal is to give guidance and advice on choosing good matches, but there is no perfect match, and long arguments over whether PC10 was more brown or more green will probably be closed. Also beware that RGB colors you see on the screen are probably not good matches for paint colors.

    When it comes to color and markings, please site your references, circumstances, and which tools you used. For instance, if you visited a museum with a color fan, please tell us which museum, the condition of the fabric, lighting conditions, etc. If you're citing from a book, please be clear which book and be aware that there have been occasional large-scale mistakes and forgeries in the history airplane colors.

    Finally, thanks in advance to everyone who makes a contribution here!
    Last edited by ReducedAirFact; 06-04-2016 at 20:52.

  2. #2

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    Love this idea, Daryl! Not sure if it was your pitch, or if you've just agreed to moderate... either way, thanks!

  3. #3

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    This should be a very useful set of threads. Thanks Daryl for taking this on and getting the ball rolling. (what is the correct color of the ball? )

  4. #4

    matt56's Avatar May you forever fly in blue skies.
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    Looks like your suggestion a while back has borne fruit, Daryl - congratulations on your Moderatorhood

    I look forward to the growth of this thread. Do you ultimately envision some sort of spreadsheet format centralizing colors (similar to the plane stats sheets elsewhere on the forum) or are you envisioning a thread for each color (CDL, PC10, German mauve, etc.)? My first impulse would be the latter, with each color having its own 'area' for discussion, but I could see some use for a spreadsheet down the line somewhere.

    ANYWAY...well done to get this going!

    All the best,
    Matt

  5. #5

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    Thanks all!

    I've been frustrated for years in the fact that some very good research has been done on colors (especially by the Windsock folks), using real fabric samples and other sources, yet it was in a mostly-inaccessible format of Methuen color references. Other color guidance was very subjective or anecdotal, e.g. "Vallejo Brown-Violet makes a good PC10". Once I found the Nix color sensor as a way to quickly and (more or less) objectively do measurements, and since it had a nice library of house-paint colors, finally there was a way to translate Methuen into something that everyone could use. (Just buy an inexpensive fan-deck from Sherwin Williams or another supplier and you'll have actual paint samples in your hand for color matching and paint mixing). In looking through our own threads, there were some good color references too, but they were frequently buried on response #16 on a thread on page 98 of Hobby Room, so they were hard to find too.

    Thanks to Keith for opening up this new subforum....I think the focus and desire to make it more easily usable as a reference will make this a go-to site whenever it's time to pull out the paintbrushes and decals.

    Quote Originally Posted by matt56 View Post
    I look forward to the growth of this thread. Do you ultimately envision some sort of spreadsheet format centralizing colors (similar to the plane stats sheets elsewhere on the forum) or are you envisioning a thread for each color (CDL, PC10, German mauve, etc.)? My first impulse would be the latter, with each color having its own 'area' for discussion, but I could see some use for a spreadsheet down the line somewhere.
    As for a spreadsheet, that might be a good idea if the topic gets large enough that it's hard to browse. We'll see how it goes. Right now I'm hoping each fine-grained color or markings-topic will have its own thread so there is room for additions, calm discussions, and corrections. I think it makes sense to keep together in one thread colors or markings that were always in combination (e.g. roundel colors, or Sqn 56 Markings) but otherwise for each color to have its own thread, e.g. German 1917 underside light blue or Udet's D.VII.

  6. #6

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    This might be a little more complicated, but it might be worthwhile to create hierarchical sub-subforums by war and country.

    Also, I don't know if USAAF had an equivalent document but the postwar USAF "bible" for how aircraft are supposed to be painted is T.O. 1-1-4. The old Osprey Aircam series and Squadron/Signal's Fighting Colors are the next best thing to official tech manuals, and Roger Freeman's The Mighty Eighth: Warpaint and Heraldry and Robert Watkins's Battle Colors series has very useful tech info on some of the more exotic camo schemes--like a P-47 Group that assigned each of its squadrons a different unique color palette and camo pattern.
    BC v1: 8th AF Bomber Command
    v2: 8th AF Fighter Command
    v3: 9th AF
    v4: European/African/Middle East Theaters
    v5: PTO
    Historical Consultant/Researcher, Wings and Sails lines - Unless stated otherwise, all comments are personal opinion only and NOT official Ares policy.
    Wings Checklists: WWI (down Navarre Nieuport, Ares Drachens) | WWII (complete)

  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Diamondback View Post
    This might be a little more complicated, but it might be worthwhile to create hierarchical sub-subforums by war and country.

    Also, I don't know if USAAF had an equivalent document but the postwar USAF "bible" for how aircraft are supposed to be painted is T.O. 1-1-4. The old Osprey Aircam series and Squadron/Signal's Fighting Colors are the next best thing to official tech manuals, and Roger Freeman's The Mighty Eighth: Warpaint and Heraldry and Robert Watkins's Battle Colors series has very useful tech info on some of the more exotic camo schemes--like a P-47 Group that assigned each of its squadrons a different unique color palette and camo pattern.
    That brings up an excellent point! When it comes to aircraft colors and markings, my contributions will be limited to the WWI-period, but contributions on WWII (and other period) colors and markings are certainly welcome here! So when -- for instance -- I use WWI examples, don't take it as a limitation on the scope, it is instead a reflection of my limited knowledge. If we accumulate a lot of postings over time, we can consider ways to categorize, from titles to sub-subforums.

    (My WWII expertise extends only as far as painting a handful of planes to fly over microarmor battlefields and blow up a few random vehicles here and there. )

  8. #8

  9. #9

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    Thank you for this organization. I am struck by the variety of German aircraft colors in the Great War. Billy Bishop's Winged Warfare has an interesting quote: "...machines with green planes and yellow noses; silver planes with gold noses; khaki-colored bodies with greenish-grey planes; red bodies with green wings; light blue bodies and red wings... One of the most fantastic ... had a scarlet body, a brown tail, reddish-brown planes... white crosses on a bright green background". Wow!

  10. #10

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    Hello, Does anyone have a recommendation for a “Sopwith” green and a doped linen paint that is easily accessible?
    Thanks and regards, Brad

  11. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by WWI Flying Ace View Post
    Hello, Does anyone have a recommendation for a “Sopwith” green and a doped linen paint that is easily accessible?
    Thanks and regards, Brad
    See the note on PC10 https://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/sh...ard-Khaki-quot.
    If you look for the red text, there's a list of hobby paints that match the PC10 color range pretty well.

  12. #12

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    Sweet! Thanks! Is there by any chance a listing for the doped linen color for the underside? I used to use Polly S Dirty Linen or Dirty White, I cant remember exactly what it was called, but it’s long since dried up and is no longer available.

  13. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by WWI Flying Ace View Post
    Sweet! Thanks! Is there by any chance a listing for the doped linen color for the underside? I used to use Polly S Dirty Linen or Dirty White, I cant remember exactly what it was called, but it’s long since dried up and is no longer available.
    Look through this sub-forum and you'll find an entry on German Underside Turquoise and German Underside Light Blue. There's only (currently) three pages of entries here, so it's not a hard search.

  14. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by WWI Flying Ace View Post
    Sweet! Thanks! Is there by any chance a listing for the doped linen color for the underside? I used to use Polly S Dirty Linen or Dirty White, I cant remember exactly what it was called, but it’s long since dried up and is no longer available.
    AK Interactive have a nice 3 bottle set of linen colors. They also have a nice German set and a 4 bottle British set.

  15. #15

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    Thanks Peter, I’m going to order a few bottles



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