This Ju-87B-2 Trop belonged to 6./St.G 2 and was stationed on the Libyan coast at Tmimi, from where it provided ground support and attacked Allied shipping in the Mediterranean during the second half of 1941.
The upper surface is RLM 79 (which I've softly mottled in RLM 80) and the undercarriage in RLM 78. What is remarkable, of course, is the extraordinary image down the entire length of the port side, which is reminiscent of Richthofen's Flying Circus and must have made the standard desert camouflage pattern completely irrelevant. The sinuous snake is based on an illustration by Rikyu Watanabe in
Stuke Ju-87 by Alex Vanags-Baginskis. Although the aircraft identification letter (T6+MP) has been retained for these screenshots, it seems to have no historical justification.
A similar plane (T6+CP)—or even the same plane, if the identification of one or the other is incorrect (one sheet of decals conveniently provides both letters)—is illustrated in Leonard and Jouineau's
Junker's Ju-87 from 1936 to 1945 and John Weal's
Junkers Ju 97 in North Africa and the Mediterranean, both of whom identify it as an extended range R-2 (
Reichweite). This sub-variant had internal fuel tanks in the wings and two drop tanks in place of the bomb racks, which doubled or even tripled the range of the plane but limited it to a single 250 kg bomb. Apart from the increased amount of fuel and the absence of sirens on the wheel struts, the R-2 shared the same airframe as the B-2.
The plane is thought to have been flown by
Leutnant Hubert Pölz, who participated in the sinking of
HMS Auckland off Tobruk in June 1941 and later was awarded the Knight's Cross and Oak Leaves on the Eastern Front, having flown over a thousand sorties to survive the war as a
Gruppenkommandeur.
Thanks to VO101 Tom for his panel finder, without which I still would be trying to align the Mediterranean theater band, and especially to Shado for making the Ju-87 accessible in the first place.