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"Messerchmitts are Purple"
By Scott Kruize

I seem to have hit a nerve at the NorthWest Scale Modelers display. Every February, we set up our models in the Museum of Flight’s Main Gallery, with the sinister SR-71 hovering overhead. This year, with a theme of “Model Citizens”, and an invitation to arrange our creations however it pleased our quirky individual personalities, I decided to put out my ‘faux’ Aurora Famous WWII Fighters.

My career in plastic airplane modeling spans two definite epochs: teens, and …ah, um… ‘maturity’. In between: the Dark Ages (phrase stolen from our Lego-building friends-and-relations). That’s when you finish school and pack up your toys…leaving them for Mother to throw out or give to the Salvation Army…and venture off to independence, college, career, marriage, mortgage… You know: Pillar of the Community-type solid citizenship, with no time for childhood frivolities.

But some of us come to our senses at last, and return to our first love of plastic modeling. In the two clubs I belong to, the NWSMs and the Seattle Chapter of IPMS, few members claim to have modeled continuously since childhood. Most admit to coming back after long absences.

My own early efforts included Aurora WW2 “Famous Fighters”, gifts from Christmas or my birthday: a Focke-Wulf 190, a “Japanese Zero”, a “British Spitfire”. My Aurora catalog showed the Messerschmitt 109, too, next on my gift wish list, when my modeling career took a turn into the “Airfix/72” Series.

But even in ‘modern’ times (I emerged from the Dark Ages in ’97), the Aurora kit influence persists. While working on a Turkish 190, a little voice in my head cried “Focke-Wulfs are black!” An attempt to build the Hasegawa A6M2 had me hearing “Zeros are yellow!” It didn’t matter how many well-researched, clearly printed, full-color books and magazines were laid out on the work table before me…the voice could not be suppressed: “Spitfires are metallic silver-blue!” “Messershmitts are purple!”

See how psychological damage can persist for nearly fifty years? Finally I realized that if I were ever going to be free to concentrate on accurate modeling, I’d have to exorcise this demon. So I devised my own psychotherapeutic course of treatment: build four kits, painted the way I remembered the old Aurora series.

Not that I went out to find and buy actual “Famous Fighter” kits. Can you believe what they go for on eBay these days?!

No: it was much more economical to gather four equivalent Monogram kits. Funny: they’re not that much more recent, dating from the early 60s instead of the 50s. Yet they’re light-years ahead of the Auroras in faithfulness to scale and quality of detail. (Yes, I know: the canopies are too thick, the rivets too prominent, and worst of all, they’ve got raised panel lines!) But although they’re so much better, they go for only a few dollars apiece at model swap meets and contests.

Did I just say “only a few dollars apiece”?! Way back when, the whole reason I settled for Aurora kits was that they were only seventy-nine cents, whereas the new Monogram series were a dollar!

Oh, well. I spent the “few dollars apiece”, assembled the parts, then fired up my airbrush…

Was that really me again? Airbrush? Paint the whole model? “Focke-Wulfs are black”, etc., because those are the colors the kits were molded in. Who painted whole models?!

Apparently, no one who can remember back that far. Hundreds of visitors wandered through the Museum of Flight display, many just idle observers, but mixed in among them, many former modelers. These would look up from the masterful work of my colleagues, catch a glimpse of my display’s signage, and wander over to examine it with a nod and a slightly strained smile. Watching them, it was clear that it isn’t just me who remembers what modeling was like way back then. Perhaps my self-imposed therapy will serve an additional purpose: bringing a few more modelers back into our ranks again from their own Dark Ages!

I resemble that article.

When I was 6, I got the Revell Mayflower kit for Christmas that I had begged for; I tried painting it with paints from a "Paint By Numbers" craft set one of my brothers got that year.

Having no idea that paints could, much less should be thinned when painting models (hey, I in 1st Grade for fuck's sake), the results were horrific, and put me off from painting models until I was a teenager.

These days, I concern myself whether or not the hue of the "Lemon Yellow" I put on a 2nd Pacific Squadron's ship funnel is correct or not, or if the amount of Olive Drab I mix with Future Floor Polish will accurately represent the "greenish tint under certain lighting conditions" of WWI British PC10 when laid down over a hopefully correct "Hershey bar left in the sun" brown.

Willikers.

I like the metallic blue Spitfire and the black Fw-190, but the yellow Zero looks like a flying clown car. I might have a purple Bf-109 as the personal plane of a female ace in a story, although I might change my mind and make it pink. (Purple might also work for a male homosexual ace, or one with delusions of being royalty.)

Sidewinder wrote:(Purple might also work for a male homosexual ace, or one with delusions of being royalty.)

...who'd be target practice for a 262, the Nazi's didn't have much love for gays either

Personally the 109 has the only paint job I dislike

I enjoy modeling like this on occasion. It also makes me feel that the Hasegawa F-20 I plan on using Air Defense Command-esque markings on isn't so outlandish.

Yellow Zeros, purple 109s... It wouldn't be that far-fetched if you compare it to some of the garish WWI schemes.

FSTargetDrone wrote:Yellow Zeros, purple 109s... It wouldn't be that far-fetched if you compare it to some of the garish WWI schemes.

In WW1, fighter pilots considered themselves modern knights, flying into battle to engage their opponents in honorable single combat. (Group fighting tactics, with a wingman covering an element leader's back and both elements supporting each other, was developed later.) By the time they realized it was a better idea to use camouflage and AVOID being seen by the enemy, Manfred von Richthofen was already dead and the war was almost over.

Sidewinder wrote:In WW1, fighter pilots considered themselves modern knights, flying into battle to engage their opponents in honorable single combat. (Group fighting tactics, with a wingman covering an element leader's back and both elements supporting each other, was developed later.) By the time they realized it was a better idea to use camouflage and AVOID being seen by the enemy, Manfred von Richthofen was already dead and the war was almost over.

Oh, absolutely. I was just talking about in terms of using one's imagination, just as you suggested above with your story idea. If we want to pretend that, say, there was some super ace during WW2, and he painted his aircraft in some bright color for the hell of it, well go ahead and model it!

Sidewinder wrote:

FSTargetDrone wrote:Yellow Zeros, purple 109s... It wouldn't be that far-fetched if you compare it to some of the garish WWI schemes.

In WW1, fighter pilots considered themselves modern knights, flying into battle to engage their opponents in honorable single combat. (Group fighting tactics, with a wingman covering an element leader's back and both elements supporting each other, was developed later.) By the time they realized it was a better idea to use camouflage and AVOID being seen by the enemy, Manfred von Richthofen was already dead and the war was almost over.

This simply isn't true.

Germany in particular paid close attention to camoflaging aircraft from 1915, especially in the air with "Sky Camoflage" schemes consisting of either very pale blue or white overall, although most single-seaters carried simple varnished fabric.

By mid 1916, schemes for ground camoflage on fighters were being introduced with dark green, medium green, and reddish-brown (Venetian Red) on the wings, natural wood fuselages, and pale blue undersurfaces. Two seaters began carrying this alongside the earlier "Sky Camoflage", too.
The British at this time were applying similar schemes, to their Nieuport fighters especially, and this led to incidents of mis-identification being reported.

Early in 1917, the Germans began replacing the reddish-brown color with mauve-violet to avoid confusion, and for this reason also individual units began employing color coding on tail surfaces and cowlings; red for Richtofen's Jasta 11, yellow for Jasta 10, black for Jasta 7, and so on.

When Richtofen had his Albatros D.III painted an overall red in early 1917 (he left the wings of this aircraft in their factory camoflage, BTW), the idea of camoflaging aircraft had been around for some time, and had a systematic, officially mandated method of application based on operational and theoretical insights.

Garish color schemes on WWI aircraft were not employed because of a lack of understanding in regards to camoflage, but in defiance of it.

Let me get this straight, Mr. Hipper: One reason WW1 era pilots painted their planes so gaudily was because camouflaged planes were becoming victims of friendly fire?

Damn. That says a LOT about the discipline the WW1 era militaries had, when soldiers were so trigger-happy they'd shoot at anything moving, not realizing until it was too late that they were shooting at those on their own damn side.

Sidewinder wrote:Let me get this straight, Mr. Hipper: One reason WW1 era pilots painted their planes so gaudily was because camouflaged planes were becoming victims of friendly fire?

Damn. That says a LOT about the discipline the WW1 era militaries had, when soldiers were so trigger-happy they'd shoot at anything moving, not realizing until it was too late that they were shooting at those on their own damn side.

No, it says a great deal about the limitations of simple visual identification in a confusing situation, and it was hardly limited to WWI.

Red code letters on Luftwaffe aircraft during the Polish campaign were eliminated after several friendly fire incidents due to confusing those letters for Polish insignia, the red centers in the stars of Amercan insignia in the opening stages of the Pacific Campaign were eliminated for the same reason, as was the red in British roundels.

This is slightly off-topic, but even to this day model train manufacturers are notorious for releasing models that are a mish-mash of prototypes or painted for road names that don't match the prototype.

One of the best selling steam engine models in HO scale is the 'Varney' docksider. Several manufacturers have released a version in a large variety of road names and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands have been sold since the 1940's. The problem here is that the 4 of the prototype that were built were only used by the B&O.

It's ok, a big ethic in model railroading is to do your own thing, freelance your ass off. It's your railroad, do what you want. And of course, those guys fight with the 'rivet-counters' that do research and take the time to model specific prototypes etc. I appreciate both sides and figure it's all a hobby anyhow, do what you like, accurate or fantasy.