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Minimoa colour scheme

Anything to do with gliders & gliding.
Espenlaub

Re: Minimoa colour scheme

Post by Espenlaub »

Jacobs Rhönadler
D-15-1015
Photo © by Archiv H.-J.Fischer

Gruß
Hans-Jürgen
Attachments
13a_Rhönadler.jpg
Espenlaub

Re: Minimoa colour scheme

Post by Espenlaub »

DFS-Reiher III
Drawing © by H.-J.Fischer

Gruß
Hans-Jürgen
Attachments
04_Reiher-III_2017.jpg
Paul_Williams
Posts: 173
Joined: 18 Mar 2015, 17:53

Re: Minimoa colour scheme

Post by Paul_Williams »

Hans Jurgen, thank your for sharing the photos and great drawings.
I replied but my post vanished, so I am typing again !

Great Rhonadler photo but I cannot read the number for the region.
Was this the Rhonadler the wing seen in the other photo of the Minimoa ?
Or do you know the date ? It looks like the tail of a Rheinland 10b on the right so 1938 ?

The Reiher I first flew just before the 1937 Rhon.
Colour for this area would have been Gelb/ Weiss so again this is not an early colour

It is very interesting that all the colour photos show blue or blue/grey colours but no others.
Were unofficial regional colours quite common ???? and why do we not see other colours ?

You reminded me that I had not replied to a query by Vince earlier in the thread about Grunau LD+SA in which he said the photo was 1940 and why was there no red fin band.

Luftwaffe Regulation Notice No.5 of 30 January 1939 effectively ordered that the red band would not be used and the swastika in future would be black, with a white outline and a black border,
Note this would affect Luftwaffe gliders but not necessarily NSFK gliders.

At the same time the registration system for Luftwaffe gliders changed to WL instead of D and XII instead of 12......WL-X11-456
NSFK numeric registration continued.

On 23 April 1943 the registration system for NSFK and WL gliders changed to a four letter system the + in LD+SA indicated its WL but a dash as in
SN - DF would be an NSFK glider.

Sammelmittelung 2 of 15 August 1944 reminded people that the simplified markings of Balkenkreuz and Swastika - just simple black lines should be used noted that the older markings with borders (that took a lot of time and masking tape) were wrongly still being used. Which shows the order to simplify had been issued earlier.

So we can say with 100% certainty that the photo of LD+SA was taken after 23 April 1943 and probably rather later.
With so many crashed aircraft in the photo I did wonder if we were seeing gliders deliberately disabled at the end of the war.

Although resistrations help us say a photo must be AFTER a certain date - we cannot say the reverse - that one was taken BEFORE a certain date.
There were many gliders photographed in 1945 by th Allies with D and WL registrations and with red fin bands. These shouldn't have existed but they did.

Paul
Espenlaub

Re: Minimoa colour scheme

Post by Espenlaub »

Zitat von Paul Williams: "Great Rhonadler photo but I cannot read the number for the region"

das ist der Rhönadler mit der Kennung: D-15-1015

Gruß
Hans-Jürgen
Last edited by Espenlaub on 19 Nov 2019, 12:07, edited 2 times in total.
Espenlaub

Re: Minimoa colour scheme

Post by Espenlaub »

Here are also 3 photos of a Minimoa
http://www.luftarchiv.de/segel/schempp_hirth.htm
Paul_Williams
Posts: 173
Joined: 18 Mar 2015, 17:53

Re: Minimoa colour scheme

Post by Paul_Williams »

Cliff,
the article on German glider markings was originally written by the Vintage Glider Club back in 1970's and I made a very small contribution to it at that time.
We have learned a heck of a lot in the 45 years since then and now have access to a lot more photos via the internet which didn't exist then.
But even today, we have quite a limited amount of reference material - I just did a rough count of known registrations ...…..

D-NAME 120
D-10-125 890
WL-IV-45 220
LD+SA 160

Total 1390

However, it should be realised that this figure inevitably includes a lot of double counting because all the D-NAME registrations would have acquired D-10-125 registrations. Likewise some D-10-125 later became WL registrations and (in theory) all D and WL registrations changed to LD+SA type.
There is no rosetta stone that tells us which became which.

I don't recall total glider production but off the top of my head its 14,000+ so at best we have only 10% of registrations and probably more like 8%
Does that matter ???
Yes, because most of those known registrations come from photographs and that shows what a small sample we have from which to judge how well the marking rules were followed and how often they were ignored. For example the colour photos used in this thread show that something was going on with blue/grey painted gliders when all should have been cream FAS.1. This is a new discovery for which there is no explanation at the moment.

The original article by the VGC was also influenced by the assumptions (held by all at that time) that gliders pretty much followed rules laid down for Luftwaffe aircraft but that is only half the picture - the defined fonts/typefaces actually used for registration numbers varied widely in style and varied dramatically in size - we now have photographic proof of this.

Note that this thread has not touched on the markings for gliders used by the troop glider training schools, which were different, the use of standard camouflage and finally the widespread us of overspray emergency camouflage later in the war as roaming Allied ground attack fighters became a
serious problem.

If there is the interest I can rewrite the markings article in the light of current knowledge - although it will always be a work in progress as new photos and documents are discovered.

Paul
Paul_Williams
Posts: 173
Joined: 18 Mar 2015, 17:53

Re: Minimoa colour scheme

Post by Paul_Williams »

Hi Hans Jurgen,
thank you for the link to the three Minimoa photos - I should have remembered them.

The two b/w photos are of Minimoa D-4-531 and the competition number 13 is from the 1938 Rhon.
Its maiden flight was 22.6.1937 which is after the end of the coloured registration system. However the b/w photo looks as though it MIGHT show the 1936/37 colours for region 4 Ocker / Weiss !!!!!

Colour photo of Minimoa D-7-2171 shows possibly a very high gloss Hellblau.
The relatively high registration number suggests this might be a mid production Minimoa, although that's just my opinion and we don't have enough registrations to be confident about that.

We now have examples of Mu13, Rhonadler and 4 Minimoas probably all in Hellblau, all apparently after 1937, with no real explanation.

Paul
IJNoble
Posts: 28
Joined: 08 Apr 2019, 12:31
Location: USA

Re: Minimoa colour scheme

Post by IJNoble »

Hello again all,
It's been awhile since I had looked at this thread and I am truly amazed by all the research everyone has done. I need to apologize for opening up this can of worms but at the same time I think all the hard work you all have put in needs to be archived as all the information that has come to light completely goes against the established rules concerning regional colour schemes.
As Paul says, what's the deal with the predominant white/blue Minimoas, Grunaus, Rhonadlers and Mu13? I have a couple of color photos of an white/blue Minimoa along with 2 B&W photos of another which I'm 99% sure is white/blue also.

Best regards,
Ian
IJNoble
Posts: 28
Joined: 08 Apr 2019, 12:31
Location: USA

Re: Minimoa colour scheme

Post by IJNoble »

I might have posted these previously
Attachments
2516_1.jpg
2517_1.jpg
untitled.png
Paul_Williams
Posts: 173
Joined: 18 Mar 2015, 17:53

Re: Minimoa colour scheme

Post by Paul_Williams »

Hi Ian,
far from needing to apologise, your question certainly made me look at photos more carefully and more questioningly. In doing so, its overturned some long held assumptions.

The b/w photos of D-4-758 nd D-4- 788 certainly appear to be two more examples of white nose and hellblau rear fuselage that do not accord with the 1935/36 regional colours.

We now see five Minimoas with these colours, from several different areas. That's 20% of Minimoa production, so I continue to suspect this might have been a factory scheme.
We also see one Mu13 and one Rhonadler which conflicts with my theory, so it is also possible that these are post 1937 regional colours used in defiance of the NSFK regulations.

More photos needed. !!!!!

Paul
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