Hi,
I am still not fully convinced with black-green camo.
Here is reason:
- July 3, 1943 - directive no.2389/0133 - the upper and side surfaces of all fighter aircraft have to be painted in greyish blue and dark grey colors.
- After the Kuban battle at the beginning of August 1943 - regiment receives "new, more advanced Yak-9 aircraft with a 37-mm cannon"
e.g. 4 iap received new planes (Yak-9 and Yak-9T cca 1+ month after new grey-grey camo was introduced- September 3, 1943 - No.267 issued - red stars have to have outline with white line 5cm wide edged with red line 1cm wide.
e.g. new type of stars were introduced cca 1 month after 4 iap received new planes.I do not know how long time it took to transfer aircraft from the factory to 4 iap, whether Zavod No.153 changed camo to the new NKAP 1943 scheme immediately, e.g. in July, whether supply of the new grey-grey paints were on hand immediately, or if they continued with black-green camo until they spent all stock etc.
But definitely there are 2 months between new grey-grey camo (July) and new type of red stars (September) are introduced. So there is pretty nice possibility to have aircraft delivered in August in the new grey-grey camo with old type red stars.
So, if everything took "appropriately enough" time, this Yak-9T could still have old black-green camouflage as shown in my previous post.
However, if things ran "miraculously fast", then this Yak-9T could have already new grey-grey camo:
I put there 24 starlets like is on the photo from Stankov's book. This number better reflects score from the summer 1943.
Regards,
66misos
