Searching for VVS Photos

[John Thompson]

Thank you, Massimo!  I remember that page, but it disappeared when the site went down, and isn't available on the restored site (at least I haven't found it).  Did anyone happen to preserve that page - I'd love to see it.

Regards,

Jason

Here's the I-153 article:
http://vvs.hobbyvista.com/Modeling/Polikarpov/I-153/72nd_Comparison/index.php

All that was lost on the hobbyvista site was the forum postings prior to a certain date; all of the articles, model pages, and other documents are still there.

John

[learstang]

Thank you very much, John!  That is the very article I was looking for (evidently not hard enough).

Regards,

Jason

[John Thompson]

Some recent images from ebay.de and elsewhere:

A Yak-1 showing some detail; no numbers visible, unfortunately:



MiG-3; some details visible; I think I've seen other photos of the same aircraft (number "24" on tail) before:



Another MiG-3, this one under construction or repair:



An Il-2, showing the reinforcing strip added to the rear fuselage of some early aircraft:



Good clear nose shot - you can even read the serial number on the landing gear fairing:



Same Il-2, from the side:



Two photos of another Il-2 with an unusual tail number:




I-16 - good clear side view with bort No. visible:



A type 5 with good focus and resolution; by brightening it a bit, the tail number is visible as "8":



An I-16 with two-colour upper surface camouflage; too bad no number is visible:



I thought this one was interesting becasue of the tail number ("2", I think) and also the location of the star under the wing tip:



Here's an image from Scalemodels.ru; it was described as wreckage from an I-16; the colours of the star and also the background colour (AE-9?) are visible:



John

[Massimo Tessitori]

Hi John,
thank you for sharing the images.
I like the camouflaged I-16, in particular; I thinkl that it had not number, the only place in fuselage where a number of usual size could be is occupied by a star.

The image of the wreckage of I-16 is particularly interesting; so, it looks that the fabric-covered parts were painted grey (instead of silver as on I-153s). Who knows if it was oil paint , nitro or what else?
Massimo

[marluc]

Thanks John for these images.
One thing I?ve noticed is that I-16,tail number 8,is a Type 5 but with a "T" shaped lower intake as in the Type 10s.
Greetings.

Martin

[KL]

Hi Massimo,  

The image of the wreckage of I-16 is particularly interesting; so, it looks that the fabric-covered parts were painted grey (instead of silver as on I-153s). Who knows if it was oil paint , nitro or what else?
Massimo

We have already discussed pre-1940 underside colours at: http://sovietwarplanes.com/board/index.php?topic=783.45

From 1937 to mid-1940 silver and gray were standard undersides colours!!!  Fabric covered surfaces were painted with nitro lacquers AII Gray or AII Al (aluminium).  Metal surfaces were painted with gray oil enamel AE-9.  Silver oil enamel AE-8 appeared in late 1938, but from ?photographic evidence?, it looks that it was only in limited use before the GPW.

Although these facts have been known for more than a decade (Vahlamov and Orlov text in 1996 M-Hobby), modelers, even in Russia, are reluctant to accept silver/gray for I-16 and I-15bis undersides.




One evidence more ? German colour photo:



Question : when are you going to remove AII Blue from the 1937-1940 part of the ?Provisional table of colors?  ?

Hi John,

I-16 relic details from Ilya Prokofyev files http://soldat.ru/files/f/00000577.doc  

?   I-16 Type 24, Zavod 21 serial No 24Р21855
?   Pilot Pavel Petrovich Titov, 4th squadron of the 5th IAP, 61st Brigade VVS KBF
?   Shot down on August 21, 1941, Leningrad Front
?   Wreck dug out from mud in 2003.

Hope this will help.

Cheers,
KL

[John Thompson]

Hi Martin! Yes, I noticed the same thing on the cowling of the I-16 type 5. I guess it's another example of how Russian aircraft designs "evolved" without clear definition of where one series or type ends and the next one begins. And also another warning not to take anything for granted!

John

[John Thompson]

Hi Konstantin! Thank you for that information - that explains the link to soldat.ru in the same post where I found the image of the I-16 wreckage. Maybe I should have opened it - I might have learned more, or at least found more images.

From your comments regarding underside colours, it seems safe, then, to use an approximate match for AE-9 (or AII Grey) and AII Aluminum (depending on whether the painted surface is metal or fabric) on the undersides of the I-15bis and early versions of the I-16? Is it the same thing for I-153's with green upper surfaces?

Thanks!

John

[Massimo Tessitori]

We have already discussed pre-1940 underside colours at: http://sovietwarplanes.com/board/index.php?topic=783.45

From 1937 to mid-1940 silver and gray were standard undersides colours!!!  Fabric covered surfaces were painted with nitro lacquers AII Gray or AII Al (aluminium).  Metal surfaces were painted with gray oil enamel AE-9.  Silver oil enamel AE-8 appeared in late 1938, but from ?photographic evidence?, it looks that it was only in limited use before the GPW.

Although these facts have been known for more than a decade (Vahlamov and Orlov text in 1996 M-Hobby), modelers, even in Russia, are reluctant to accept silver/gray for I-16 and I-15bis undersides.

Hi Konstantin,
no doubt, the exam of photos and relics of I-15bis and I-153  show the use of grey and silver in this way, but at present time we have not found photographic evidence of two colors on the undersides of I-16s. In one of the photos of I-15bis, if I remember well, a grey repainting was visible on fabric too, so it was not impossible to use grey paint over these surfaces.
The photo from Scalemodels looks grey to my eye, eventually we (or someone reading Russian) can look for the owner that saw the relic and can answer on what the color was.

About the photo with German soldiers, it was colorized, possibly from a bw original.
I have colorized many images by using photoshop, and recognize the wide surfaces with uniform hue colors.
So it is not a proof of the color of the plane.

Question : when are you going to remove AII Blue from the 1937-1940 part of the ?Provisional table of colors?  ?

Some day I'll do it, and reorganize the page with schemes and photos. But at present time I am not fully convinced that what was found on Polikarpovs is valid for all types.

Massimo

[mholly]

Hi Massimo,

but at present time we have not found photographic evidence of two colors on the undersides of I-16s

I said many times (and will maintain it) that "photographic evidence" is the least reliable portion of any color research.
Spending too much time on it will surely bring us back to "Pilawskii's camp", and that would be a shame.
Bellow is an excerpt from Orlov's response to "The Great Pilawskii's Albom Nakrasok Rebuttal" relevant to this matter (see his site):

In order to analyze the black-and-white photographs, one MUST KNOW the type of light-sensitive layer of film on which the picture was taken. For example, Br-Ag film without enhanced sensitivity has the upper limit of the spectral sensitivity in about 540 nanometers i.e. the spectrum of the yellow-green to red colors will be represented (on the photo paper copy) in very dark shades of gray while visually dark purple color with appear in the picture as very bright. These films as well as any photo paper can be developed under red light.

With the introduction of optical sensitizers into photo emulsion we can "bump up" the upper limit of spectral sensitivity. In the image taken with such a film red color will appear already light.
Besides the curve of spectral sensitivity is not monotone since it has its peaks and valleys as well as nearly horizontal segments. For example, isopanchromatic film has roughly the same spectral sensitivity in the region from blue to red colors i.e. in such a film blue, yellow-green and red colors will have approximately the same brightness ( A brief photographic guide, Goskinoizdat M. (not the NKVD!!!) 1952, p. 161).

I also discussed this with a color scientist. If the above is missing you must have, as an utmost minimum, the original, first generation of prints. Not God knows how many times reprinted, retouched, reformatted copies!
For decades till today, kit manufacturers, publishers, artists and some "experts" depicted undersides of several Japanese Navy AF multi-engine types such as G4M1 Betty, J1N1 Irving, P1Y1 Frances as "gray". That's how it looks in B&W pix and besides it was a common knowledge that IJNAF aircraft were gray on the bottom surfaces! Documentary and relic research has proven that they (undersides) were unpainted natural metal.
What I'm trying to say is that thorough knowledge of relevant paint/camo standards is the crucial starting point.
People still don't seem to believe (including yourself, with all due respect) that VVS had pretty well developed systems that were controlled and followed. For a very simple reason-logistics!
Therefore it's pointless to discuss (and look for photographic evidence) of AII blue on any VVS aircraft prior to 1940. It doesn't say that this paint didn't exist already and was even test-applied! Unless TU (tekhnicheskyi uslovya) were released and confirmed however large-scale (standard) painting simply did not occur! To support this with another example look at the case of AMT-1 brown. This paint was developed in 1941 (maybe even earlier) but not used until 1943.
Cheers,
Mario

[Massimo Tessitori]

Hi Konstantin,

I said many times (and will maintain it) that "photographic evidence" is the least reliable portion of any color research.
Spending too much time on it will surely bring us back to "Pilawskii's camp", and that would be a shame.

I don't think that photographic evidence is so useless. In photos, one can always see if the idea that two surfaces are painted with the same colors is sustainable or not. Besides, metallic colors create different shadows and reflexes than grey. So, it's impossible to distinguish grey from light blue, but it's possible (at least on curved surfaces) distinguish silver from grey.

If I remember well, the table in the text of Orlov gives silver for all undersurfaces, but photos have allowed to state that, on (many, perhaps all) I-15bis and I-153, the metallic surfaces were grey while the fabric surfaces were silverish. So I wouldn't say that photos are unuseful. There is only to state if the same thing is valid for I-16s too, and photos of wrecks of I-16 are all but rare.

Another case where official standards are not confirmed by photos is the grey-grey camo for Il-2 and 10. Unless differently proved, I would say that the relative template was never put in practise.

About Japanese planes, it could be the same thing of brown-green camo on Soviet planes; however, for what I know, the grey color did exist on Japanese planes, but not on all.

About AMT-1, I am not so sure that it was not applied. Photos of non-standard camouflages with three shades did exist in 1941 and 1942 too, and AMT-1 is a candidate for the lighter shade. Of course, they could have mixed other colors too.

Regards
Massimo

[warhawk]

Now here's a neat color photo (appears authentic, not colorized)


http://basik.ru/images/third_reich_part_1/08.jpg

[Massimo Tessitori]

Hi,
look at this Il-2 colors!

http://www.avia-n-aero.ru/photo.php?category_id=21&parent_id=0&photo_id=6559&countdisplay=&start=40
Massimo

[learstang]

Interesting picture of a Shturmovik, Massimo!  I've noticed that some of those very early IL-2's, where it looks like the black may have just been painted over the prewar green, have some rather interesting patterns.

Regards,

Jason

[Massimo Tessitori]

Hi Jason,
this looks likely. Somewhat faded A-19f and fresh A-12 black seem a likely interpretation of this highly contrasted scheme.
Regards
Massimo