Luftwaffe Camouflage and Markings, 1933-45, Volume 1: Pre-War Development, Paint Systems, Paint Composition, Patterns Applications, Day Fighters (Classic Colours) [Hardcover]

K. A. Merrick (Author), Jürgen Kiroff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2004 | ISBN-10: 1903223385 | ISBN-13: 978-1903223383

9 x 12, More than 300 photographs, color paint chip cards and appendices

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Classic Publications (2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1903223385
• ISBN-13: 978-1903223383
• Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,435,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The definitive guide, and well worth it, but..., November 27, 2005

By 

Lawrence A. Cherniak "scale modeler" (Elkhart, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Luftwaffe Camouflage and Markings, 1933-45, Volume 1: Pre-War Development, Paint Systems, Paint Composition, Patterns Applications, Day Fighters (Classic Colours) (Hardcover)

As a longtime Luftwaffe modeler, I had been anticipating this release for quite a while and was not disappointed. First, what it is not: it is not a book filled with beautiful profile paintings and color artwork showing the authors interpretations. He leaves that up to you and your library.

What it IS is an exhaustive scholarly work which examines every available relevant document- including long lost supplemental paint chips for the desert colors and late war greens- and attempts to order the previously confused world of Luftwaffe colors with logical arguments and reasoned speculation. It is also a source of the best real German paint chip color charts you are ever likely to see. Three are included in this volume- two exact replicas of 1936 and 1938 charts and one unexplained RAL and auxiliary colors chart. These chips match not just the chroma and value but the pigment formulations and reflectivity of the original formulations.

Sprinkled throughout as illustrations of the authors arguments are also the best selection of Luftwaffe wartime and recent wreck color photos you're likely to find, and reproductions of original documents including splinter scheme diagrams (and a Ta152 drawing explaining to leave the undersides unpainted- leading to a very clear explanation of this practice). So far we're 5 out of 5, and have already earned the price of admission.

Very very briefly put, Merricks conclusions are well reasoned, expertly honed, and sure to irritate some know-it-alls. As such it is essentially conservative- in a good way- in that he presents the colors as they were and claims they didn't vary much (with a couple of key exceptions like RLM 76 getting paler). According to him for example RLM 63 was an RLM 02-like gray but paler and that was that. Sometimes it looked darker and sometimes lighter depending on application conditions. 65 was 65. There was one consistent late war green-blue.

There is a radical bombshell hidden in his work, though, which may forever change the way we look at late war colors, and that is that they were simply a reintroduction of the deleted prewar 61, 62, and 64 (being 81,82, and 83 respectively) as tested (along with '02) by JG54.

WHAT? You mean I've got too many paints on my hobby bench? While the paint chips make this argument visually persuasive once brilliantly pointed out, it is still a speculation on flimsy evidence which you'll just have to trust Merrick on. And I personally defer to his expertise 95% of the time.

Fascinating tidbits abound: early Bf109B's in transparent zinc chromate primer, Royal Blue Ju88's with black and sand-yellow "arabesques", Messerschmitt "house color" gloss gray-blue RAL5008(which is found, unannounced, on the auxiliary colors chip chart).

Main downside which kept me from giving an unqualified 5 rating: organization! This is a reference work which is difficult to use as a reference work. It is meant to be read for comprehension. But how about a page explaining each color chip chart? No, you have to wait until they come up in the text (p.26, 35, and ???). What color was a Ju86P? Well, it's on p.122, but you'll just have to remember that because there's NO INDEX. How about a timeline? Etc. I found myself taking notes of useful information, because I know it will be very difficult to find again later.

I was also disappointed that the entire subject of interior colors takes up only a 3-page appendix, although there are other scattered references if you can find them. There are also many references to colors which will appear on chip charts in volume 2, so you really should invest in both volumes. Maybe an index for both volumes will appear there as well.

Overall recommendation: buy the darned thing. It will be the standard work of its type for decades and will increase in value better than your retirement account, if for the paint chips and primary documentation alone. Be prepared to be in awe and a little frustrated. Buy a book like Sundin's "More Luftwaffe Fighter Aircraft in Profile" for inspiration, and this one for understanding. And dear fellow modelers, be prepared to look at that beautifully crafted work on the shelf and now "know" it's all wrong. But, with the latest expert understandings in this book, your next one will be magnifique.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars When 83 equals 64, August 29, 2007

By 

selrach - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Luftwaffe Camouflage and Markings, 1933-45, Volume 1: Pre-War Development, Paint Systems, Paint Composition, Patterns Applications, Day Fighters (Classic Colours) (Hardcover)

The scholarship of Kenneth Merrick as seen in his latest work, "Luftwaffe Camouflage and Markings 1933-1945 Volume I " has gotten better but there is still ample room for improvement. In this latest book he actually identifies some of the sources upon which opinions about late war Luftwaffe camouflage are based instead of having us take his word for it. Not only are new documents and color photos cited, but also arguably the most solid evidence that exists - the remains of the actual planes of the period - in their original paint!

Merrick's earlier "Official Monogram Painting Guide" of 1980 was a marvelous work in its day and for years afterward. The authoritative but circumspect style of Merrick with his coauthor Hitchcock gave us confidence that the color chips presented therein were based directly on paint samples from actual aircraft that he had seen and recorded first hand. Paint variations and lack of available documentation may have led him to present a full six different shades from green to brown for color RLM 81, but this need not faze the reader, assuming rigorous research methods were followed. We took his word even though he and Hitchcock did not, as professional researchers should have, historians or archeologists, provided a thorough, specific list of the aircraft on which his conclusions, e.g. the color chips, were based.

His latest book reveals that we should not have trusted him so unquestioningly back in 1980 and should probably be wary even now. The reasons are the same as before. He (and any other aspiring authority on this matter) needs to be much more thorough in citing his sources and more forthright in explaining his information assessment techniques. As an example, we now find out that the color scheme of a rudder of a Bf 109 K in the current work is really gray and dark green whereas it was claimed to be brown and dark green by Merrick in 1980. The color in the color print from back then indeed looks brown and not gray. But there should not have been any mistake made here. The artifact still exists and it should have been a straightforward matter (although airline tickets can be expensive) to actually examine the object in person or at least talk with the owner. Likewise, in the 1980 work, it seemed to be inferred that one or two He 162's still existed at the time in there original paint in Canada and were available for examination. The undersides of these plane look in photographs to be an exceptionally paler blue than the standard RLM 76. The clear deviation of this color from the standard could have been firmly documented by a personal visit 30 years ago. Even now it is not clear to what extent the data of the author is actually first hand, which is not to say all data must be so. The reader wonders whether the author in fact personally examined an important wreck of Fw 190A recently found near St Petersburg, Russia. Maybe he did. He does not tell us.

Merrick gives us a plausible rationale that RLM colors 81,82 and 83 were resurrected versions of colors from the 1930's before the war. Sounds interesting. Sounds possible. He also claims that these shades were for the most part strictly and consistantly formulated, variations in hue or shade being mostly due to thickness of application and the nature of the underlying surface. However, he does nothing to support his case, when in the example of the Aussie Bf 109, he identifies multiple shades of `standard' colors like RLM 75 and 02 on the airframe and then says they don't match the documented standard even though other effects played no role. So - the colors are different, but they are the same. Sounds a bit hazy. Although color photographs can be deceptive, he does not explain convincingly to the careful reader why RLM green 82 on Me 262's look consistently more deep and bluish than it does in color photos of the He 162, Me 163 or of certain Fw 190's. Moreover, RLM brown 81 is also seen to vary. In color photographs of Bf 109's, including his own featured in his book, the brown is consistently lighter in appearance than the specified dark chocolate hue found on other aircraft. Merrick also identifies RLM 81 as being the darker shade on some color photos of Me 262 prototypes that many readers will easily interpret as a dark olive. The colors RLM 81 and 82 do appear to be generally consistent with the standard Merrick sets for them. However, in contradiction to Merrick's claims, existing evidence suggests that detectable, systematic variations commonly occurred as was the case with American camouflage colors.

I in many ways like the book (although some of the color prints could be a lot better). And though I would recommend it to anybody interested in Luftwaffe camouflage, the main questions I would still indelicately ask of Merrick are these:

Of the extant artifacts that may reveal the the nature of late war Luftwaffe camouflage which ones have you actually studied in person? Identify them please. What system do you use to assess and record their colors? What about using spectral analysis or other scientific methods to record data on the actual artifacts? Specifically, what were the things you got right and wrong about the color chips of 1980 and why? Perhaps he will eventually answer these questions and hopefully do so in print. If he does a good job of it he will not just be an `apprentice' researcher as he now considers himself, but a researcher indeed.

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love the color chips, February 20, 2006

By 

Sasu Mattila "sasu" (Finland, Europe) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Luftwaffe Camouflage and Markings, 1933-45, Volume 1: Pre-War Development, Paint Systems, Paint Composition, Patterns Applications, Day Fighters (Classic Colours) (Hardcover)

I bought this book because of the color chips that come with it.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of photos and camouflage schemes, too. I have not read any text yet though.