Drawing by Tapani Tuomanen

This color photo of a UT-2 captured and remarked by Hungarians during the Second World war creates even more problems of interpretation of an usual wartime bw photo. The camouflge on the wing looks of easy interpretation, with well recognizable red brown, grey and green bands, and the yellow is clearly recognizable on the band painted on the fuselage. The white bands on the tail, characteristic Hungarian recognition mark, are clearly visible. But here things stop to be clear.

One would expect red and bright green bands aside the white ones on the tail, but the photo doesn't show them, not even on the stabilizator and elevator that are under the same light of the wings. Some green pixels can be seen on the fin leading edge under the white band, and some red above it, but they are not brighter than the camouflage on the wings. Besides there is very few space for a green band under the white one on the fin/rudder; if there was one, it had to be very narrow, contrary to the use seen on other planes, where the red, white and green bands have the same width.

Image of Arthur Stein from http://airfield.narod.ru/yak/ut-2/color/photo_ut-2_09.html

Here is a bw version of the same image.

The thing was discussed here, without reaching a sure conclusion.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234954888-colors-on-the-tails-of-hungarian-planes-of-the-ww2/#entry1537454

It is interesting to say that a photo of an Il-2 remarked by Hungarians show the white bands only, without red and green ones. The remarking could be uncomplete, but it's a surprising coincidence.

The camouflage of the plane was reconstructed partly from the photo, where possible, partly from analogies with Hungarian Ar-98s.