ACE-33
John Jenkins Designs
Another colourful Albatross from Jasta 46!
The Albatros D.III was a biplane fighter aircraft used by the Imperial German Army Air Service (Luftstreitkräfte) during World War I. It was the pre-eminent fighter during the period of German aerial dominance known as "Bloody April" 1917. Early D.IIIs featured a radiator in the center of the upper wing where it tended to scald the pilot if punctured. From the 290th D.III onward, the radiator was offset to the right, on production machines while others were soon moved to the right as a field modification. Aircraft deployed in Palestine used two wing radiators, to cope with the warmer climate.
Von Richthofen and most other German aces won the majority of their victories on the D.III, and it even turned out to be more successful than its alleged successor, and continued in production for several months after the introduction of the D.V. Peak service was in November 1917, with 446 aircraft on the Western Front. 1,866 Albatros D.III planes were produced. The D.III did not disappear with the end of production, however. It remained in frontline service well into 1918.
As late as March 1918, there were still nearly 200 D.IIIs in service on the Western Front, eight months even after the introduction of its successor.
The WW1 German lozenge patterns are some of the most interesting and distinctive camouflage schemes ever devised. During the early stages of the Great War, the Germans were looking for a way to effectively camouflage the aircraft of the Luftstreitkräfte to inhibit enemy observation of the aircraft while it was in the air as well as when at rest on the ground. Large, irregular blotches with two or three colors were used on the upper surfaces of the wing which led to the development of the Buntfarbenanstrich, the lozenge camoflage made up of repeating patterns of irregularly shaped four-, five- or six-sided polygons. Because painting such a pattern was very time consuming, and the paint added considerably to the weight of the aircraft, the patterns were printed on fabric, and the fabric was then used to cover the aircraft. This printed fabric was used in various forms and colors from late 1916 until the end of the war.
Lozenge camouflage was a German military camouflage scheme in the form of patterned cloth or painted designs, used by some aircraft in the last two years of World War I. It takes its name from the repeated polygon shapes incorporated in the designs, many of which resembled lozenges.
In Germany it was called Buntfarbenaufdruck (multi-colored print) but this designation includes other camouflage designs such as Splittermuster and Leibermuster, and does not include hand-painted camoflage.
Some modern German sources refer to lozenge camoflage as Lozenge-Tarnung, as tarnung means concealment, cloaking or camoflage.
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