Repaint Request

**skylane** · January 25th, 2016, 02:19

Hello!

I´d like to ask a favour of one of the talented painters here in the Forum:

I could use a repaint of Corrado´s Mc-202 (MC_202_84) in the colors of 384a Squadriglia, 153°Gruppo, 53° Stormo, as they were used in Sicily in 1942/43.

I attach a page from a book on the history of this unit, any one of the three Sicily skins would be highly appreciated.

Maybe someone can help?

Cheers,

Wolfgang

***Rami*** · January 25th, 2016, 13:11

Wolfgang,

I don't know what you're working on, but you certainly piqued my interest.

If you need any harbors or other GSL scenery, please let me know.

**skylane** · January 28th, 2016, 09:18

Hello Andrew!

Ok, I´ll tell you: I'm working on an Italian campaign, where you fly MC-202s and Bf-109s from Sicily in late 1942 until the summer of 1943.

And I thought it would be nice, if I had an MC.202 in original colors of the time. I have found skins for the Italian Bf-109s that were used by this unit, but no Macchis.

Thanks for the offer with the scenery, but I made two Harbors, Trapani and Marsala in western Sicily myself. I did use your Licata, Messina and Palermo Harbors in the campaign. Very nice scenery indeed!

**skylane** · January 28th, 2016, 23:31

Work is in progress!

**skylane** · February 4th, 2016, 00:00

Some pictures of the 374 Squadriglia MC-202 in action:

Thank you, Captain Kurt!

***Rami*** · February 4th, 2016, 00:05

Skylane,

God, I love a good Mediterranean campaign. Keep up the good work, and if you need anything, all you have to do is ask.

**kelticheart** · February 4th, 2016, 01:55

Originally Posted by skylane

Some pictures of the 374 Squadriglia MC-202 in action:

Thank you, Captain Kurt!

Hi Wolfgang,

I must report there's a small error in the wing roundels of the first screenshot you posted. It's a recurrent repainters' error and it has to do with their orientation.

I covered this subject already in the past more than once, but I cannot recover those old thread. They probably got lost during SOH life.

Anyway, the 3 symbols inside the roundels are the ancient Roman consular symbols of an ax bundled in a bunch of sticks. It meant the law administration power the consuls had, from the lowest punishment of public lashing to the highest of death sentence through beheading.
Such consular symbol was adopted by fascists, who dreamed to bring back the glory of Roman Empire.
As a matter of fact, "fascio" means "bundle" in Italian, such as the bundle of whips wrapping the ax in the consular symbol. "fascismo" could be translated in "bundlism".

Wing roundels in Regia Aeronautica were changed to the previous red-white-green Italian Royal Air Force roundels to fascist roundels shortly before Italy joined WWII, and the roundels were painted so that the ax blades in the 3 consular bundles always pointed outward.

In other words, viewing any aircraft from the top or the bottom, the right roundels would have the ax blades pointing to the right, viceversa left roundels would have the ax blades pointing to the left.
The fuselage coloured fascio symbol, normally painted on both sides of the fuselage or, sometimes, both sides of the engine cowls on multi-engine aircraft, has the ax blade always pointing forward.

The first screenshot shows the M.C. 202 left wing roundel with the ax blades pointing towards the aircraft fuselage, while they should point leftward. The roundel must be turned around 180°.
The below beautiful M.C. 202 profile, courtesy of Wings Palette, shows exactly what I explained above. The first picture shows the ancient Roman symbol.

This, of course, doesn't mean whoever repaints a Regia Aeronautica livery overlooking this detail is some kind of dumb or else. It's an error I even found many years ago on plastic scale models built by Italian modellers, paintings I saw on modelling magazines, even aviation history books. It's very easy tripping on this detail, the important thing is to correct it before releasing the repaint.

Captain Kurt's splendid repaint, otherwise impeccable, would be sadly spoiled.

Thank you both, gentlemen, I can't wait to see your new effort future release.

KH

**Captain Kurt** · February 4th, 2016, 09:24

Hi Guys,

This is essentially Corrado la Posta's original skin for his model. All I really did was to add the squadriglia markings.

I am 3000 miles away from home until the middle of next week but when I get back I'll see about creating a couple of original skins for Wolfgang. Kelti I will bear in mind your information on the insignias. That is good information to know.

**kelticheart** · February 4th, 2016, 23:31

Originally Posted by Captain Kurt

Hi Guys,

This is essentially Corrado la Posta's original skin for his model. All I really did was to add the squadriglia markings.

I am 3000 miles away from home until the middle of next week but when I get back I'll see about creating a couple of original skins for Wolfgang. Kelti I will bear in mind your information on the insignias. That is good information to know.

Thank you, Capt. Kurt!

I forgot to add some extra historical info. The wing roundel background went through an evolution during the war, just like insignias of almost every other air force involved.

In 1939 the roundel ax-and-bundle and the outer circle were painted white on a black background, the colour of fascism. During the initial neutrality period from 09/1939 to 05/1940 the colours were reversed to black symbols over white background.
In the second half of 1940, during the first battles in North Africa, the roundels were painted without the white background a low visibility measure designed to improve the aircraft camouflage effect from the top.

This is why a mixed batch of Regia Aeronautica aircraft liveries, during 1940-41, can be found wearing either black-on-white or low visibility wing roundels. It depended mostly on the time ground crews had to repaint the roundels in the field, while new aircraft were factory painted with low visibility wing roundels. From the second half of 1941 to 09/08/1943 all R.A. aircraft had low visibility roundels.

Capt. Kurt, if I may add another suggestion: from what I can understand in the profiles posted at the beginning of this thread by Wolfgang, the white wingtips of those unit liveries should all be painted over with camouflage. Not all R.A. squadrons painted the wingtips of their planes with the Axis theatre colour, white for MTO, limiting to the large fuselage band and the spinner, as shown in the Folgore profile I posted above.

MVG3d: if are following this thread, please correct me if I wrote something silly! Your sources about Regia Aeronautica are certainly more exhaustive than mine!

KH

**kelticheart** · February 5th, 2016, 02:57

...from your usual pest.....

Italian fuselage ID markings were always composed by the Squadriglia (slightly smaller than an Allied squadron) number, followed by the individual aircraft number.

To date, this identification method is still followed by Italian Air Force.

Therefore, Wolfgang the profiles you posted do not depict aircraft belonging to 384th Squadriglia, but aircraft #10, #9 and #3 of 374th (1st, 3rd and 4th from the top) Squadriglia, 153rd Gruppo, 53rd Stormo.

The second profile from the top depicts aircraft #2 of 363rd Squadriglia, 150th Gruppo Autonomo.

KH

**Captain Kurt** · February 5th, 2016, 06:27

Kelti

Do you have any 384 Squadriglia, 153 Gruppo profiles or photos from 1942/43 you could post?

**mvg3d** · February 5th, 2016, 08:01

Originally Posted by Captain Kurt

Kelti

Do you have any 384 Squadriglia, 153 Gruppo profiles or photos from 1942/43 you could post?

Hi Captain Kurt,
153rd Gruppo Autonomo CT was formed by three Squadriglie : 372nd, 373rd and 374th, it was based on Caltagirone's, Sciacca's and Chinisia's airports since September 1942 until May 1943. The 153rd Gruppo was initially equipped with AerMacchi MC.200 "Saetta" and later with AerMacchi MC.202 "Folgore". This unit never had a 384th Squadriglia. I'm preparing for You some profiles for 153rd Gruppo's aircraft.

**mvg3d** · February 5th, 2016, 08:12

Originally Posted by Captain Kurt

Kelti

Do you have any 384 Squadriglia, 153 Gruppo profiles or photos from 1942/43 you could post?

**mvg3d** · February 5th, 2016, 08:12

Originally Posted by Captain Kurt

Kelti

Do you have any 384 Squadriglia, 153 Gruppo profiles or photos from 1942/43 you could post?

**Captain Kurt** · February 6th, 2016, 20:20

Awesome, thank you

**kelticheart** · February 8th, 2016, 02:41

....is the true Regia Aeronautica encyclopaedia around here!

KH

**mvg3d** · February 8th, 2016, 02:56

Originally Posted by kelticheart

....is the true Regia Aeronautica encyclopaedia around here!

KH

Thank You Stefano !!!
I have only a BIG library.....

**kelticheart** · February 9th, 2016, 01:36

Originally Posted by mvg3d

Thank You Stefano !!!
I have only a BIG library.....

Yer' welcome Manuele!

May I announce here that the two of us are working on a new publication for all SOH friends?

Manuele sent me an history of WWII Italian Royal Air Force (Regia Aeronautica) 1940-43 insignias to translate into English.

I agreed to do the translation and we will publish it to the SOH library, to help all repainters have a clear picture of what kind of insignias were worn by Italian WWII aircraft.

A little anticipation gem: the fuselage/engine cowl detailed colour fascio symbol, I told you about, was not spray painted. It was a decal.

Attached below a little hors d'oeuvre of what's in store for you!

Thank you, Manuele!

KH

**skylane** · February 20th, 2016, 09:40

Hello Kelti,
thanks for the interesting information about the Regia Aeronautica markings!
Unfortunately I know absolutely nothing about painting CFS2 airplanes, so I think this detail will remain like it is. I hope people will enjoy my campaign anyway!

In case anyone is interested: The profiles in my initial post are from the book "53° Stormo" by Marco Mattioli, published by Osprey Aviation Elite Units.
There are several more profiles in the book, 40 in all, covering all the important planes this unit flew. These books (I have several more of the series) are usually very well researced, so I think the profiles should be quite accurate.
From this book I also got the idea and the Mission Details for my campaign.

By the way, the campaign is almost finished and should be ready for upload within the next few weeks, depending on how much free time I can get.

**skylane** · February 21st, 2016, 09:56

Just after I wrote my last post yesterday I got an E-Mail from Captain Kurt with three new repaints for the MC-202!
He also made new flight dynamics, which greatly improve this airplane!
Today I started to change my missions to make use of all three planes, and I want to test them again to check out the new flight characteristics.
Therefore it will take some time before I will release the campaign.

**kelticheart** · February 23rd, 2016, 03:23

Hi Wolfgang, you are very welcome!

WIP UPDATE:

I translated about 40% of the manual. I am very busy at work, so I am not lightning-fast. Please, be patient, the final result will be very helpful to all of our talented repaint artists.

KH

**Captain Kurt** · February 23rd, 2016, 10:44

I started out just doing the repaints for Skylane but as usual got carried away. I did a seven new paints but also noticed while testing that the plane did not fly right and Skylane pointed out the armament was wrong. So I also made a completely new set of flight files and fixed the dp. I'll be posting all of the new C.202 Folgore packages in a moment.

Regarding the national markings, most painters know there are a number of nationality marking sets out there which can be cut and pasted into new skins, but as far as I know there isn't a good set for Italy. So I made my own to use on the Folgore.

What do you think Kelti, good enough for other painters to use for their skins?

**mvg3d** · February 24th, 2016, 01:23

Originally Posted by Captain Kurt

....What do you think Kelti, good enough for other painters to use for their skins?

Hi Captain Kurt,
Your bitmap is indeed good, but remember that almost every Italian factory used a different type of fasces and different application system (decal or stencil). The document we are preparing will contain explanations about almost all the insignas used during the period 1940-8 September 1943 from different factories and periods.
For the ANR (Aviazione Nazionale Repubblicana / RSI) insignas we'll prepare another document in the immediate future, it will be precious because also the ANR used a bunch of different insigna's shapes for the wings and the fuselage !!!
The ICoAF roundels are OK, but their dimensions and shapes were different because many times the painting was a "field work"...