Green uppersurfaces, with light blue undersurfaces;
this scheme is common for MiG-1s and early MiG-3s, till the war outbreak.
The metal surfaces (aft fuselage, horizontal tail surfaces, central wing
plan) appear lighter than the wood surfaces (rear fuselage, outer wing
panels); this was probably due to different painting techniques on separed
sub-assemblies before the final assembly.
Some prototypes and test aircrafts appear painted with a darker shade,
called Factory Green; this was perhaps the same colour used on many I-16
and most I-15bis; it's not sure that some operative aircrafts had this
color.
Examples used later in the war were sometimes repainted with AMT green
and light blue, and had usually white outlined stars.
Green and "black" uppersurfaces, with light blue
undersurfaces. The "black" rarely appears strongly contrasting on green;
perhaps it was mixed with a bit of green, or it was a very thinned layer
of black over the green background. Differently from the green background,
camo bands were painted on aircrafts after the final assembly and show
not interruptions or shade changing in correspondance of some panel lines.
This combination looks to be the most common during fall 1941.
Green and Dark Green uppersurfaces, with light blue
undersurfaces. This looks to be common on aircrafts built during the summer
1941; the contrast of the two shades is very low on bw photos.
Multiple shades, probably field repainting over
a two-color base. The scheme could be painted on a particular aircraft
only, or could be a unit level scheme; the interpretation of such photos
and films is partially hypothetical. The use of black on green/dark green
aircrafts is particularly usual, perhaps due to the wider availability
of black paint rather than dark green one on the field.
White mottling over camouflaged aircraft, or camouflage mottling over a
white aircraft; both these combinations look rare on MiG-3s.
White undersurfaces (by workshop or field, painted
over the standard camouflage) with light blue undersurfaces. Sometimes
different shades of white (or light grey) are present on the same aircraft,
particularly on the removable panels that could be exchanged from one aircraft
to another.
Overall white or light grey.
Captured and remarked examples worn non-Soviet colors
partially covering the original paints.
Click on the profiles to see a more detailed example. Note: some of these notes are based on previous researches of
Erik
Pilawskii .
