Hi Konstantin, Mario and Graham,
MK-7 was basically a mix of casein and chalk. It was usually applied with the brush. It was washable/removable with warm water.
Warm water or time could have been scarce. Besides they could have utilized unwashable white paint if lacking of Mk-7. This is better that to let that Germans hit the planes on the ground. Besides I think that not too many planes painted in white survived the winter to be washed or repainted.
I agree with Mario: it didn?t make sense to overpaint rough, uneven, water soluble and brittle MK-7 with aviation lacquers.
Numbers on winter planes were usually red or black, so they have to be overpainted over white. I don't remember to have seen chipping on numbers of winter planes.
I don?t see any evidence of overpainted MK-7 on posted photos either. On first two photos MK-7 is weathered or partially removed. I can?t see any white winter paint on last two photos
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In my idea, I think to see brush strokes. Green dots made by brush on the first photo, horizontal or oblique brush strokes on the second one. Besides, the slogan 'za rodinu' visible on the second photo was avoided by the brush strokes. Clearly they were in a hurry.
This is another image of MiG-3 of the same unit. The black band on the wing is clearly overpainted over weathered white, it's not a shadow because the light direction is about horizontal, and there is no trace of continuation of this shadow.
BTW, I can?t see any snow on last two photos? and it looks that there are some green leafs on trees in distance...
Of course, else the planes should still be white.
This is a previus image of the MiG-3 with slogan (visible on the background). As you see, in the second image the canopy frames are still white.
About the LaGG, this is known to have been previously dotted with white paint.
This is the same plane some months after, after a partial deletion of red markings with black. The light parts on the nose, interpreted by other authors as sand, are probably remains of white paint, white other parts of the plane were freshly repainted.
Well before Hornat's article about VVS colors came out in 1989 there was a debate in former Czechoslovakia what were the camo colors on La-5FN used by Czechoslovak pilots. One of KP (making 1/72 La-5FN kit) employees had B&W pix analyzed in criminal lab on photospectrometer (??) and was told it was brown and green! But we all know now (don't we?) that there were 2 grays, AMT-11 and 12.
The information on the original hue and saturation of colors is definitively lost on bw photos, it is known. They can only be compatible or uncompatible with hypothyzed colors. It looks strange that kp employees did this...
Regards
Massimo