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Gotha G.IV colours


Fred Jack

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Looking at the Customers photos at Wingnut Wings, I noticed a number of Gotha G.IV bombers with a lozenge pattern. I wanted to point out that the lozenge pattern did not appear until the G.V.

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It did actually, there are at least two photos of a G.IV in painted night lozenge and multiple of aircraft (primarily SSW-built G.IV) in painted hexagon lozenge. If you have the "Gotha!" book, have a look at pics # 30 &38 (underside of the wings), and #79 for full fuselage lozenge.

 

There are photos published on Wingnut's website of a crashed SSW-built G.IV with fuselage hex and an LVG-built airframe in the instruction manual in full airframe lozenge  

 

Gotha%20G.IV%20SSW%201071~16%20crash%20-

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GIV's were not originally designed for night operations and were "sky" camo'd in white dope with pale blue scumble, plain white (off white for a scale model) dope or later GIVs in the series did indeed have the "early" regular 5 colour "lozenge" pattern printed flax. Disastrous losses meant that the campaign was moved to night operations and any available airframes were re-finished - hence the hand painted hex and irregular polygon patterns and dark blue dope overpainted "lozenge" effect (which rendered the bright "day" colours virtually indistinguishable. This has led to the belief that there was a specially printed palette of "night" colours - I don't believe this to be true.

 

Don't you just love it when someone trots out a statement they've pulled off the internet?

 

regards

Richard

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There is a good thread at the aerodrome on this point.

 

The resident gurus there did indeed state that there were at least a few G IVs that had the lozenge treatment and a whole mess of other schemes as well, with lots not being known on this topic.

 

I.E., have fun and enjoy the scheme you would like to do b/c it may well have been accurate.

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  • 2 weeks later...

GIV's were not originally designed for night operations and were "sky" camo'd in white dope with pale blue scumble, plain white (off white for a scale model) dope or later GIVs in the series did indeed have the "early" regular 5 colour "lozenge" pattern printed flax. Disastrous losses meant that the campaign was moved to night operations and any available airframes were re-finished - hence the hand painted hex and irregular polygon patterns and dark blue dope overpainted "lozenge" effect (which rendered the bright "day" colours virtually indistinguishable. This has led to the belief that there was a specially printed palette of "night" colours - I don't believe this to be true.

 

Don't you just love it when someone trots out a statement they've pulled off the internet?

 

regards

Richard

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I built my first Gotha in the ‘60s. Back then there was no internet, but a lot more books to research WW1 planes than there are now. I still have my old Profile Magazine on the Gotha that I used to paint my G.V.

Edited by Fred Jack
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