German Purple, Italian red, or is it green

C.P. Hart (hartc@spot.colorado.edu)
Tue, 10 Oct 1995 09:32:53 +0000

Greetings all,

While My DFW C-V Datafile is still stuck in surface mail I offer a
couple of Methuen readings on contemporary camouflage colors from the
Rumpler C-IV Datafile #35

From the paintings on the back cover, aircraft C-IV 8455/16

The mauve/lilac color on the painting is a close match for 16D4
The dark green is a close match for 27F6

In the text of the datafile the following Methuen references are given:

Green: 26F3; 27E3; 29D5; 30E6/8
Mauve/lilac: 15E2/3; 16E4; 17F8; 18D4/6

An informal survey of photographs in various Albatros publications
shows that the majority of Ansaldo and Macchi aircraft had
roundels/cockades with outer rings of green.

The restoration of the SPAD 7 C.1 of Francesco Baracca shows cockades
with a red outer ring. While one responedent to this thread suggested that
the Italians merely overpainted a French cockade with a Green center spot,
this would be unlikely in the case of Baracca's a/c. The wing cockades are
about one-half the size of those found on French examples.

Charles

hartc@spot.colorado.edu