Very interesting mottle on a 109

[Allan]

here's a shot of a mottled 109 that I find very interesting
can you tell why?
it's because the mottling on the nose is just so uniform
lots of blokes tell us to use our airbrush to produce a random mottle, but look at this plane
see the bloke sitting on the wing? well, starting from his right elbow there is a straight line of same-sized, uniformly spaced mottles, four in number
and underneath that line of mottle you can see two more, again same-sized
the only thing random about this plane's nose mottling is that there is perhaps one more mottle sort of out of place just near the air inlet that is further away from the spinner than the other one
lesson: let's not be too precious about randomness with our Luftwaffe mottling
Allan in Canberra

[PR19_Kit]

Somewhere in Luftwaffeworld there are entire BOOKS devoted to just this one aircraft I'm sure. 

[Dizzyfugu]

Totally agree that you can be über-realistic, and AFAIK there has been much pragmatism and "personal style" among the Luftwaffe staff. I know of one Bf 109 which had neat circles(!) as mottles, and JG1 during the Battle of Britain had very distinctive, dense and tiny mottles on the fuselage sides that it almost looked like a uniform color. And they used whatever was at hand, esp during the final months of WWII. So "clean" as many models for that era look, they actually probably never were. 

[NARSES2]

Nice find Al 

Totally agree that you can be über-realistic, and AFAIK there has been much pragmatism and "personal style" among the Luftwaffe staff. I know of one Bf 109 which had neat circles(!) as mottles,

There's a late Ju 88 (S I think) that had round "mottles" that look as though they were applied by dipping the bottom of the paint tin in a tray of paint and then plonking it down on the surface of the aircraft ?? AMT (I think) included it in their Ju 88 kit

[sequoiaranger]

>...round "mottles" that look as though they were applied by dipping the bottom of the paint tin in a tray of paint and then plonking it down on the surface of the aircraft ?? <

Hmmm    ---gives me an idea--kind of a "bubblebath" look. Maybe "duplicated" with a small-mouthed paint jar rim--"paint" the rim with a brush, then press the rim onto the model in a "random" pattern!

[Dizzyfugu]

There's also a Ju 88 I know which was found in Belgium (I think it has been published as a 1:72 kit by Hasegawa recently) which had black underside, a RLM 76 top and on top of that a kind of polka dots pattern of dark grey or dark green, almost circular and dense mottles - all the same size and shape, but with no regular pattern, though.

[Dizzyfugu]

Ah, sorry, it was a Ju 188 - this one here. As funny as it seems, the aircraft REALLY looked this way!


Found at modelsforsale.com

[The Wooksta!]

I'm sure that scheme was also on the Ju 88S and possibly the He 177.

[Dizzyfugu]

Certainly - it was improvised, as many German cammo schemes. It's just amazing what modelers consider "bad style" or "unrealistic", and what actually found its way on real world aircraft

I mean: would you believe THIS?


Linked from wp.scn.ru

The illustration is a little idealized and the rings clearer than in reality - but this mount of Hauptmann Hans von Hahn HAS shows some style... 

[NARSES2]

Always liked that one 

[matrixone]

A number of Bf 109G-6 and G-14's in 1944 were painted with very clean uniform looking mottles but those 109's painted that way all came from the same factory, by that stage of the war there were several factories building the 109 and the way they painted the mottling on the fuselage varied quite a bit and was seldom as neat and tidy like the 109 pictured in this thread.
When the 109's were being painted in the factory there were painters on each side of the fuselage spraying on the mottling as the machine was being rolled through the production line, the mottling on one side of the fuselage could look different than the other side. The lesson here is don't be fooled by assuming the style of mottling on the cowl of a wartime 109 is the same as the rest of aircraft. There are a lot of variables at play.

Matrixone

[CANSO]

...it's because the mottling on the nose is just so uniform...

To be honest I never think of any "uniform" Luftwaffe camouflage, just looking at the old b/w photos, sometimes blurry, sometimes to dark or overexposed. Even if there are some examples differing from the rest so much, that one can call them exceptions, they are more a result of a good idea and stronger painter's hand rather than something done on purpose to make any mottling look uniform.
The circles of von Hahn's Me-109F-2 are not ideal and not uniform at all, but the idea to camouflage a combat airplane with them is like a "whif" created during the WWII. I like the chevrons better - they really look like stickers or decals, almost like photoshoped.

The polka dot pattern of this Romanian Bf 109G-6 is also not that common, but not unusual at all. The painter had probably more time or maybe he just wanted to play longer with the airbrush 

The photo below shows a well known wreck of a Ju-88 with a rather "practical" camouflage. It's obvious that some areas were done by spraying the paint through a kind of a net. It eventually saved some time, but is the mottling uniform? I find it simply different. In a good way of course.

[NARSES2]

That Ju88 is interesting. I never thought of the mottling being done through a net before - simples as the Meerkats say 

Thanks for that thought

[matrixone]

NARSES2,

Despite of how it looks the camo on the Ju 88G-1 was NOT painted by spraying through a net, if you look closely you can see the the lighter RLM 76 was sprayed over the darker topside color RLM 75 to form the mottling. The demarcation line of the top and bottom colors can clearly be seen midway below the cockpit and on the engine cowl.
This was the standard method used by Junkers to paint nightfighter camouflage in the last months of the war.
I have a couple photographs of a factory fresh Ju 88 nightfighter that was captured at the end of the war where the camouflage painting was not quite finished with one of the wings not oversprayed with the RLM 76 squiggles and left in RLM 75...its not known if there was a shortage of RLM 76 or a shortage of time that prevented that Ju 88G from getting its full factory camouflage paint job.

BTW, there were a few (but not all) He 219s that were also painted with RLM 76 squiggles over a gray RLM 75 topside to form the mottled nightfighter camo pattern, the only surviving He 219 at the N.A.S.M. is one such machine that used this style of camouflage painting.


Matrixone

[NARSES2]

Right, thanks  I would obviously have failed the photo interpretation course