Which Richthofen triplane are you building? Dr.I 477/17 and Dr.I
425/17 were overall red dope, including the wheel covers. (425
with a white rudder and 477 with a red rudder) Dr.I 152/17 was
the standard Fokker 'streaked olive' with 'red upper deck, red hood,
red wheels, red tail' (per Richthofen's own description) Ditto
on Dr.I 127/17 although there are some detail differences between
the two.
>
>What color were the wheels. Not the rubber part but the disks.
>
>I have never seen a spandau machine gun, so was the stock section made of
>wood? blued gunmetal? or what. any coloring info on the guns to make them
>realistic would be appreciated. Figured the middle of the guns was black and
>the end blued, but correct me if I was wrong.
>
Spandaus don't really have a 'stock' - the parabellum is the one with
the stock. I've only seen one 'real' Spandau myself and it was an
infantry, not an aircraft gun but, for what it's worth, it was painted
kinda a dark greenish grey - I'd kinda suspect that paint, rather
than bluing or parkerizing would be the norm on all machine guns of
that era but this is more of a guess than anything else. Still,
from what I recall of other medium and heavy MG's of the WW2 era and
before, most, if not all, of them were painted.
>Control horns, were they red to match the rest of the plane, wood colored,
>steel, etc.
>
Just a guess but as MvR's aircraft were repainted red at the unit level
(with maybe the exception of Dr.I 477/17) there doesn't seem any reason
the painters would have carefully masked off the control horns - probably
just slopped some red dope over them too.
>What was the prop coloring like. Figure wood, but what kind of wood.
>
Hmmm! Good question. Lamenated wood, alternating lighter and darker
wood for sure but I don't think I've ever seen a reference to exactly
what woods were actually used in props.
For what it's worth!
Cheers,
-- Bill Shatzer - bshatzer@ednet1.osl.or.gov - aw177@Freenet.Carleton.ca -