I had always wondered what causes the fascination modelers have with German WW2 subjects. After building a few models over the years, I am beginning to understand at least some of the fascination. Whether the subject is aircraft, armor, or figure, the Germans employed a wide variety of colors and patterns to adapt their equipment and themselves into numerous battlefields across multiple continents and spanning all four seasons. The Allied forces were far less innovative with camouflage, though in the case of aircraft, we partially made up for it in individualized aircraft markings.

The Reichs Luftfahrt Ministerium (RLM) had created a standard of colors and camouflage patterns for Luftwaffe aircraft not unlike those used by the Royal Air Force during the same period. As the war raged on and lessons were learned from combat, the RLM continued to evolve the colors and camouflage patterns to help improve survivability of man and machine. Even with these standards and the inherent German discipline, Luftwaffe aircraft tended to have more variations in color and/or camouflage patterns than their British counterparts.

There is no small amount of information published on the bookshelf and on the internet regarding RLM colors and their equivalents. As I gathered materials for this article, I was fascinated with the variety of interpretations of RLM colors versus US Federal Standard 595 (FS 595a/b) colors. I decided this was a good starting point for researching this article.

Armed with my FS 595b paint chip book that had just arrived from Meteor Productions, my FS 595a color chips from 1984 and my valued copy of 'The Official Monogram Painting Guide to German Aircraft 1935 - 1945', I set out to look some of these interpretations. One of the first things most people understand is that except by coincidence, there is no direct correlation between the colors used by the RLM and the modern US military. Therefore ALL of the color correlations between RLM and FS 595 are based on degrees of closeness. In the case of this article, if the correlation is not marked as 'approximate' then the degree of correlation is, from my interpretation, close enough for government work. If it is marked approximate, then while the color was the closest match (in my opinion), it was still different enough to warrant attention. That being said, the one thing that the Monogram book does emphasize, and this is reinforced by color chips, is that many of the RLM colors did vary slightly during the war, so the color interpretations I make are no more or less valid than those published elsewhere.

A note about FS 595 - FS 595b did add a number of colors previously not recognized by FS 595a. Breaking down an FS number, such as 34087, the first digit in an indicates the degree of gloss of the color: 1 is gloss; 2 is satin/semi-gloss; and 3 is lusterless/flat. The second digit categorizes the color: 0 is brown; 1 is red; 2 is orange; 3 is yellow; 4 is green; 5 is blue; 6 is grey; 7 is miscellaneous; and 8 is fluorescent. The remaining three digits are assigned to catalog the increasing degree of reflectance.

When these color standards were developed, not every color is available in all three degrees of glossiness. This tends to cause a little confusion in the modeling community as, for instance, RLM 21's closest match is FS 27780 - a semi-gloss color. Since RLM 21 is flat, one would assume that the correct color would be 37780, but there is currently no such color in the catalog. A similar problem occurs with RLM 28 - its closest match is FS 10032, but it is only available as a gloss. Fortunately, most of this discussion is academic as few of the FS matches listed in the table below are even produced by the model paint manufacturers so these matches are provided for the use by those who need to mix their colors.

In this first table are the closest FS 595 equivalents to the RLM color chips:

Armed with the above and a set of FS 595 paint chips, the average modeler can recreate the necessary colors through a little creative mixing. Since mixing paints sounds like more work than I care to undertake, here is a table of paints - acrylic and enamel - that are available straight from the bottle in the correct (and consistent) color:

You can find many of these paint lines in your local hobby shop, but if you don't have these available to you locally and you are obviously reading this article online, then you can obtain these colors from the following online sources:

Hannants (www.hannants.co.uk)

JPS Modell (www.jpsmodell.de)

Squadron Shop (www.squadron.com)

VLS (www.modelmecca.com)

White Ensign Models (www.whiteensignmodels.com)