Discussion

Just received Vol 2 from a local distributor. Like Vol 1, a superb production.
Please note the erroneous heading on Page 424 that should in fact read 8/JG6.
Can't wait to see Volume 3.
Best wishes for 2008.

Hello all,

Very good book, but...
We find in it always the same error which consists to consider that orthochromatic films are yellow non-sensitive. This blunder has been written elsewhere (I don't remember where...) a long time ago and is still to be seen in modern books.
As I told several times on other sites, orthochromatic films
are yellow sensitive and red non-sensitive. But all is not very simple, because at the end of the war we could find red-ortho films that had better rendering in the red colours and which had almost the same renderings as the well known panchro films... Non-chromatised films are not sensitive to yellow and almost only to blue and a little to violet sensitive.
As a photographer, I can ascertain that orthochromatic films are used to eliminate the yellow backing of old documents when photographically copying this sort of "old papers".
This mistake prevented you to identify the very rare (unique ?) Fw 190D-9 of JG 6 ("black <II + ) sporting a red/white/red band...
It's likely that it should have other JG 6's Fw 190D-9 with the RVD band.
All the best,
Jean-Claude

Hello,

Two things :
1)
After re-studying the sensitive curves of the different types of films in use at the end of the war and in connexion with the photographs of pages 32 and 33 in "Doras of the Galland Circus", EF 1, there is another possibility : the numerals and the circle are green and the photographs were taken on a panchro film with a medium green filter with the effect of darkening the red colour of the undersurfaces and lighting the yellow tip of the spinner which, in this case, tallies the hue of the RLM 76 color of the sides of the engine cowling...
Other photos were made on ortho films with a dark rendering of the green color of both numerals and circle...
The photograph on page 8 was taken with a panchro film, so that the green color of the circle and the red undersurfaces have the same density of grey.

2)
If no D-9s at all ever wore the JG 6's RVD band, the D-9 with <II + markings, on pages 334 to 337 in volume 2, is of JG 4 with black/white/black bands. Even if on the photo of page 337 we could think at a well weathered black color, I don't think so, because, on page 338, the dark color of the RVD band, even against the sun, is lighter than the black svastika... In "Doras of the Galland Circus", EF 1, on pages 16 and 17 can be seen "red 1". The black rendering of the red undersurfaces indicates the use of an ortho film. Look at the renderings of the yellow band of the Si 204 in the background and of the yellow tip of the Fw's spinner on page 17 : medium grey. If "<II" had had a yellox/white/yellow band, the rendering should have been the same : medium grey, and it's not the case. On a panchro film the rendering of the yellow color should have been much lighter (as with a panchro film with green filter), as on "<II" of Fw Werner Hohenberg's plane (Volume 1, page 115). In spite of some contrary elements, I continue to think that "<II" in volume 2 is JG 6's plane with, too, the caracteristic spinner spiral of this unit...
Cheers,
Jean-Claude