Line drawings Heinkel He-51b

[Penio]

Jesters-Ink forgot the tunnel to a karborator, but there was such feeling that changed a form!

[Jesters-Ink]

Its there, but on this size and background you can hardly see it

[Logan Hartke]

I know it would be terribly irritating to not get the amounts/numbers exact for your aircraft but a bit of educated guessing and BS here and there might not get seen at small size.

That's exactly what I did for a profile of a What If He 46 variant I did as a present for my father based on some pencil line art he'd drawn up. If you zoom in to the image, you can see read the text on the tail. I don't want to hijack the thread, so I'm just posting the link rather than the image itself.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v132/loganov/Profiles/Heinkel%20He%2046/?action=view¤t=GermanHe46G2.jpg

Cheers,

Logan

[Jesters-Ink]

Sometimes it has to be enough, lets face it, there are only a handful if any of these old gals left and the photographs that do exist are less than helpful.

[Logan Hartke]

And as many who've been at this a while know, markings and paint schemes in real life were only as accurate as the guy holding the paint brush. Despite what all the regulations may say, I can usually find as many exceptions as I can examples that fit the rules.

Cheers,

Logan

[Clint Mitchell]

"Hey man, the Luftwaffe was really strict with it's application of codes, markings, and camouflage. They followed the guidelines and rules as set out by the Reichsluftfahrtministerium to the dot because that was how the German's rolled man."

The following is an extremely accurate representation of my reaction to such a claim:

[inkworm]

That has made my day Clint.

Just compare the Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons of the Battle of Britain with the German units. The RAF did follow the guidelines (minimal nose art etc) only because they didn't want to avoid arguments 70 years later on markings. I'm sure the Luftwaffe only messed around to wind us up.

[Clint Mitchell]

You see a reasonable amount of adherence to such rules up to about October/November 1939. Other than the usual expected anomalies that occurred for example if at the factory Han's only had 15 mins until his lunch break or Günther really needed a fag break so they rushed the application of the swastika so it wasn't in exactly the correct position. Throw a war into the mix and you start to see some pretty haphazard practices. Who can blame them: The following is the official RLM diagram guide of how to draw a Hakenkreuz:



It's actually wrong and impossible to draw a correctly proportioned swastika from it's measurements. That's the official guide.....

I once knew quite an esteemed gentleman who thought he could date a photograph by the location of the swastika on the tail fin. A couple of inches in either direction and he could date the photo to within six months or so. Total BS...

Factories had a degree of accuracy but nothing special. In the field, unit level or depot applied and standards are completely out of the window.

[inkworm]

I'm sure I read that you could tell which factory built a B-24 from the location of the stars and bars, bearing in mind they weren't being bombed whilst in the paint shop that I can see as probable. As we all know the Nazi workers were very diligent and accurate!

[Clint Mitchell]

It all boils down to the painter. Each different guy would have had certain visual reference points on the airframe that he would choose to line his markings up with. Although in the guides measurements are given on how to space out the markings on each different aircraft if these measurements were followed every time they would not have got anything done. Possibly the first couple of times he painted the markings he would measure them out but once he got confident with the general location he would eye ball it each time. Take into consideration that you might have 8-10 different factories building and painting the airframes. That gives you a fair number of painters at the factories all eyeballing the markings in their own unique way. I mean each factory didn't just have one painter who worked 24/7, there would be different guys working shifts. That goes for the splinter schemes also. I've seen many slight variations of the same general theme but all uniquely different. Even Bf109Es that are very close in the same WNr. batch that have quite different applications of the same general 71/02/65 splinter pattern. You do see consistencies but you see just as many inconsistencies which can be a pain in the ass...