Classic Publications | Soviet Air Force Fighter Colours 1941-1945

Reviewed by Gene Nollmann

At the time of this book’s release in 2003, there were no 1:32 scale kits in production representing aircraft from the ‘Great Patriotic War’. Scratchbuilder’s Polikarpov I-16 had long been out of production and Azur didn’t release their I-16 until late in 2004. Now that a number of 1:32 scale kits of the GPW are becoming available, such as CraftWorks’ Lavochkin La-5/F/FN, Trumpeter’s Mikoyan i Gurevich MiG-3, Azur/Special Hobby’s Polikarpov I-16, and an announced future release by Special Hobby of kit 32011 a Yakovlev Yak-3, Soviet Air Force Fighter Colours 1941-45 has become more germane to the large scale aircraft hobbyist than ever!

Life for this book begins 22 Jun 1941 with the German offensive code-named ‘Operation Barbarossa’ and to the victims known as the ‘Great Patriotic War’ or GPW (and as Pilawskii points out, this was actually the second so-named war, the first being in 1812-1814 against Napoleon) and ends with Victory in Europe 8 May 1945. When I first bought this book in 2003, I should have paid more attention to the title and then I would not have been disappointed that it was not the help I expected with an OOP Scratchbuilder’s Spanish Civil War I-16. Now that I’m attempting an I-16 of the GPW I am learning that for the subject matter of Erik Pilawskii’s book, there is none better in English and I doubt that anything will ever come close. For GPW aficionados the book has acquired its own acronym, ‘SAFFC’.

About the author Erik Pilawskii

Born in the US, but living mostly in Europe, Erik Pilawskii works as a senior IT engineer and manages to find time for modeling aircraft, consulting for museums, researching and writing this book.

Having successfully pierced the ‘Iron Curtain’ to access key historical records in the former Soviet Union, Mr. Pilawskii commenced study for this book in 1987. The formidable Soviet bureaucracy, by maintaining the extensive records that bureaucracies tend to do best, allowed Mr. Pilawskii to harvest and distill vast amounts of detailed information from factory records and offer us a delightful tour de force. A study of the bibliographic reference and factory records that Erik examined speak volumes for his organizational skills and research perseverance.

How ‘SAFFC’ is organized

‘Author’s Introduction’

Here Erik Pilawskii humbly acknowledges the contributions made in the past by several Russian aviation historians.Foremost, he holds in high esteem the work of Vadim Shavrov with his 2 volumes titled The History of Aircraft Construction of the USSR (in Russian only), A T Stepanets in his work on the Yakovlev OKB and their aircraft, and of V Vakhlamov and M Orlov with M-Hobby Magazine (Moscow).The names of a new breed to look for are Mikhail Maslov, D L Leypnik and S Kuznetsov.In the area of pilot history and biography look for Hans Seidl and Russian historians Sultanov and Abramovits.

‘Preface’

Erik Pilawskii is passionate about the subject matter of his book; keep that enthusiasm in mind when reading his introduction and be prepared that his fire also thoroughly lights the subject at hand and you will benefit from the results of his enthusiasm producing this book.As a trained pilot and a gifted researcher, he presents a fresh view of Soviet aircraft of the Great Patriotic War (fresh to the English reader at least).

‘Abbreviations and Glossary’

Terms and Acronyms

78 listed, such as:

‘A Treatise on VVS Color Systems’ (16 pages)

It is not the sequence the author penned, but this is of such overall importance and application it feels appropriate to place this up front. Erik says, “All paints and varnishes in use in all Soviet State Aviation Factories were produced at a limited number of factories...”

I had to take note of a conversation regarding VVS paints that appeared on a forum thread of the Modeling the Aircraft of the Soviet VVS 1930 - 1950 wherein Erik Pilawskii comes more to the point, “There is absolutely no "changing manufacture appearance" question in VVS paints. We are not discussing RLM paints. RLM paints were manufactured by more than a dozen different companies, for different periods of time. Moreover, by their own admission some of these periodically changed the formula of the paints they made, and thus the color.

Manufacture of Soviet aviation lacquers is completely the opposite. AII Brown was made at one factory for more than 10 years. The appearance of the paint never changed in any way. There are ten surviving specimens of this paint (11 if you count the DB-3), spanning manufacture from 1940-46. All of these examples are precisely similar; they differ in appearance not at all. The same is true for all other known GPW paints.”

That doesn’t mean there is no longer any challenge, but the focus can be placed on different issues.With that, back to the book.

Erik Pilawskii begins this section with an introduction to the ‘old’ and ‘new’ color systems in use going into the GPW.You will be introduced to the most common aero-lacquer nomenclatures, AII, AMT, and A designations and a table of 27 paints identified with the ‘official designation’, the ‘common factory name’, and the ‘common field name.’

The bulk of the rest of the treatise is divided into heading groups ‘1940-1941’, ‘1942-1943’, and ‘1944-1945’.These heading groups are further sub-headed with ‘Frontal Aviation’, ‘Naval Aviation’, ‘Interior Color’, followed by a table identifying all fighters of that year group that use which paints in a single color-, double color-, or triple color-camouflage scheme.Beyond the repeated sub-headings there will be special topics relating to that year group that do no repeat but may have general application.

A Color Equivalency Chart is given using Federal Standard 595, Pantone, Methuen Colour Book, and Munsell system for reference with comments in each system where matches were difficult or not possible.Many reviewers have bemoaned the fact that the book does not include a representative color chart.Erik has since created a webnet referencewith the caution that one of course cannot use the onscreen colors for matching, but it does help tremendously in following color references in his book.In addition, John Snyder of White Ensign Models has produced a line of paints called “Russian WW II paints” that match as best as possible color samples provided by Erik.There are sixteen paints that come in a ‘Humbrol’ type tin with the content color painted on top of the lid.The set contains both the early AII colors (the ‘A’ is followed by a Roman numeral 2, but sans-serif alphabets may lead one to think this is ‘all’) and the later AMT colors as well as various primers, interior colors, and the puzzling tractor green used by one particular aircraft factory as a temporary substitute.

Scott Van Aken as published a good web review of these paints and a photo of the lids of the entire collection . Pilawskii concludes with a half-page review of Black & White film types in use during the GPW and their characteristic response to the camouflage colors in use at the time.An excellent over the shoulder view of the Man at work analyzing a B & W photo can be seen in this article: http://vvs.hobbyvista.com/Markings/Yak7_White03/index.php

‘An Introduction to Soviet Aircraft of the Great Patriotic War’ (4 pages)

Erik Pilawskii uses this brief section to give overviews and clarifications of several aspects of VVS aircraft components and practices, such as, powerplants, weapons, cockpit design philosophy, aircraft type designation and nomenclature, and production variation practices.Lastly, some comments on camouflage application technique and some notes on the publication of camouflage illustrations.

The Chapters (171 pages)

In the main body of the book, each chapter is devoted to a particular fighter manufacturer and aircraft type from the Great Patriotic War:

Each aircraft chapter is started with a section of in-depth history of each aircraft’s development.These sections are concise but packed with interesting information, generally avoiding anecdotal asides and focusing on factors that ultimately influence the aircraft’s design.The history sections are spiced-up with a handful of very nice color profiles by Chris Banyai-Riepl (leaving one screaming for more!!). Pilawskii caps the history with Performance Tables of all the significant variants in metric standards (and these are repeated in Imperial standards in an appendix).

Following the Performance Tables are a mix of 4-, 3-, and 2-view line drawings of the major sub-types depending which views are required to depict differences. The line drawings are a nice inclusion and appear to be well-detailed, but lack an indication of scale, or better yet the inclusion of a ‘graphic scale bar’ (which would overcome the issue of variance in fidelity through the printing process) and would have been useful to the modeler.

The chapter concludes with a detailed survey of the aircraft types’ camouflage as it evolved throughout the GPW.Conjunctive with the camouflage segment are 3-view color schematics (port, starboard, and top views) of each significant variation of camouflage pattern (and the paint-types used to achieve that appearance).In this concluding section several black & white photographs, the vast majority from the archives of G F Petrov, are included to illustrate the men and the machines of the VVS (and I think to point out what a daunting task it is to identify useful information from existing archives).Aside from the great photographs and Banyai-Riepl’s color profiles, the subject of GPW markings remain a mystery for the historian or modeler, requiring research elsewhere.The appendix includes one page to address markings, but only general comments about overall types of insignia.The markings would be a great subject to add to a ‘revised and enlarged’ edition.

Although both the Polikarpov I-15 and I-16 were primarily aircraft developments prior to the GPW, they have been given a chapter each because of their early contributions to the war until more advanced aircraft came to the field.Their Spanish Civil War or other foreign service coloration is out of the scope of this book.

Erik Pilawskii explains in the Preface his belief that a broad set of factor influence the camouflage of aircraft and in chapter after chapter he brilliantly demonstrates the soundness of his premise.

Appendices

Notable Prototypes and Developmental Aircraft

Bibliography

Erik Pilawskii indicates this is a “cursory listing of the most important materials” from 15 years of research.

Primary Archival Sources

Index

A listing of only the personalities mentioned in the text (exclusive of photo captions).

Reviewer’s Conclusion

Erik Pilawskii’s approach to the subject, Soviet Air Force Fighter Colours 1941-45, is a well-planned and convenient reference for the modeler wishing to bring some respectable authentication into the coloring of his GPW models.The book has some minor flaws, most notably the absence of a representative ‘paint chip card’, but Erik’s expertise (and paint chip collection) have been put to good use with the White Ensign Model’s paints.The book is a masterpiece and I highly recommend it.

As for models, modeling is a curious bag of tricks and introducing models of subjects not in the mainstream is risky, especially in 1:32-scale, because of the bulk in materials used and shipped and also in cost.Compounding the risk is the lack of a support network in the form of readily available reference materials, paints, decals, and kit enhancements.With regard to the Soviet VVS of the GPW, one would think Stalin still controlled the information modelers need to detail their aircraft!

Soviet Air Force Fighter Colours 1941-45 fills a big piece of the ‘network void’, good authentic color paints are available, kit enhancements are blossoming and decals are, well, what’s happened there?!Anyway, the hand-packed core of a snowball has been formed and is ready to roll and grow.The subject matter is fresh and fascinating.So bring on the 1:32 kits – where are the Lavochkin’s and the Yakovlev’s?!!

The End – not yet! Then there are spin-offs:

A website inspired by the book (note the time period is expanded considerably):
Modeling the Aircraft of the Soviet VVS 1930 - 1950

Modeling’s VVS Research section:

A very good article on the process of identifying camouflage using b/w photographs:Yak-7 The Anatomy of Colour by Erik Pilawskii

Online Addendum and Book corrections:

Online Color Chip Table:

White Ensign VVS WWII Aircraft Paints: Review by Scott Van Aken, on Modeling Madness, date unknown

The 1:32 Kits

Links to articles about the photos shown (with permission):

© 2006 Gene Nollmann, each photo © by model builder as credited in the photo

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This review was published on Saturday, July 02 2011; Last modified on Wednesday, May 18 2016