Skins by Aelius

[planesy]

That is absoloutly gorgeous!

Brings back fond memories as a kid building the 1/32nd scale Revell Model Stuka!

Please please make a skin available.

Great work

[jamesdietz]

Boy oh boy! I first found a picture of this Stuka back in 1962 in a long out of print ( 1944) book covering the war..I even did a colored pecil rendering of the same...so it is one of my favorites.several versions have been available in Il-2 for bothe the Ju-87B & later versions , but unfortunately no one has ever takenthe time to really go over the exterior of the IL-2 birds to get them up to the standard of say the Il-2 third party redo's of the Bf-109s & FW-190s .No such problem here at CloD where the Stuka really is sharp! Now with this skin its even better & if all goes well we'll have a Med map to use it on in what 4 or 5 years? Til then it ,when available, it will appear over the Channel! can't wait o get it to download!!!!!!

[aelius]

Snakes on a plane!

Two more screenshots, this time derived from the color profile of T6+CP in Weal, and Leonard and Jouineau. Although not as personally satisfying as the interpretation by Watanabe, the snake profiled by these later authors is much better known.

The unit code is T6+CP but, like the T6+MP illustrated by Watanabe, it is informed supposition, based on a photograph that had shown only the front of the plane forward of the cockpit. Not until 2005 were more complete photographs published that allowed a correct profile of the Schlange Sturzkampfflugzeug. And it is that plane, T6+DP, on which I am working.

[JG52Krupi]

That looks AMAZING

[JG52Karaya]

That is an awesome looking Stuka skin!

[Frequent_Flyer]

that is outstanding work, based on your skin alone Luither should make the Med theather their next add-on.

[aelius]

The earlier screenshots of T6+MP and T6+CP were skinned in standard tropical livery: RLM 79 (Sandgelb) mottled in RLM 80 (Olivgrün), with the undercarriage in RLM 78 (Hellblau). These were the desert camouflage colors of the Luftwaffe in North Africa but, while the scheme does make for a satisfying plane, they are not accurate for the one thought to have been flown by Leutnant Pölz.

The Luftwaffe had not envisaged operations in the Mediterranean and so had made no provision for a tropicalized version of its aircraft. As a result, the first Stukas to be deployed in North Africa retained their original European camouflage: a splinter pattern of RLM 70 (Schwarzgrün) over a dark green background of RLM 71 (Dunkelgrün), with RLM 65 (Hellblau) on the undercarriage. The German Air Ministry (Reichsluftfahrtministerium) would not officially select the specific shades of RLM 78 and 79 until late 1941 or early 1942, although they were being issued by late April 1941, less than two months after the first planes were transferred to Libya. In Luftwaffe Camouflage and Markings 1933-1945, Merrick contends that these planes retained their European scheme until they could be repainted at the factory and that, since it was not practical to paint them in the desert, they must have been serviced at depots in Sicily and Italy. Urbanke disagrees and argues that, with airfields being shared with the Italians, it was more likely that their own camouflage colors were used and applied in the field.

When the Ju-87 of Lt. Pölz was repainted in the summer of 1941, the undersides of the plane probably remained in RLM 65 and the upper surfaces sprayed in Giallo Mimetico ("camouflage yellow"). There were four shades of this color, each designated by a number and supplied to the Regia Aeronautica by four different manufacturers. The precise shade is therefore uncertain, but in skinning the plane, I've used the darker Gaillo Mimetico 4 splattered with Gaillo Mimetico 3, a color lighter than "sand yellow" RLM 79. Because it was applied directly over the European scheme, one still can discern the original green splinter pattern of the sections that were not oversprayed.

The white and red snake, too, did not look as it usually is profiled, which is reasonable, given that such a gaudy creature hardly would have enhanced the camouflage of the plane.

This color scheme is discussed by Axel Urbanke in an article that appeared in 2005, "The 'Snake' Stukas of Sturzkampf Geschwader," published in Luftwaffe im Focus, Edition No. 7. The first photograph of the plane (above) had shown only its front, and for the next thirty years the overall appearance would be the speculation of profilers and modelers. (The picture referred to by Urbanke has been taken from Die Deutsche Luftwaffe im Afrika-Feldzug 1941-1943 by Held and Obermaier, which is available in an English edition as The Luftwaffe in the North African Campaign 1941-1943).

In one of the photographs, which were published by Urbanke for the first time, the plane is clearly shown to have the unit code T6+DP (and not "C" as supposed by Obermaier). And the snake, rather than having been painted in red and white, to have sand-colored markings. But Urbanke also suggests that the trailing half of the tail rudder was painted in the same RLM 65 light blue as the undercarriage (as can be seen in the upper photograph). It seems more likely, however, that the difference in shading is due simply to the shadow cast by the rudder having been slightly turned. (The "J" under the port wing, by the way, is the manufacturer's code.)

Here, then, is T6+DP of 6./St.G 2 based on a modification of the color profile by Egbert Friedl that accompanied the article. The markings have been redrawn from photographs, the trailing blue edge of the rudder omitted, and the inside of the wheel spats camouflaged. The result, I think, is the most accurate historical rendering of the Schlange Stuka to date.

Although identified by Obermaier and by others later as an R-2 sub-variant, the plane in the photographs does not have drop tanks and seems instead to be a B model, as indicated by Urbanke.