Description

This series is all about the paint and markings of Radial Engine FW190s. This book, like its siblings, will take you on a journey to understand the paint, camouflage, and markings of the FW 190s to get a working knowledge of what these looked like from every major final assembly location: in this case, Arado. The who, what, where, when, and why are explained. Combining over 40 colour profiles of the aircraft, and its parts with period intelligence, captured documents, factory defects, interesting fun facts, and over 50 many never-before-seen photographs.
Telling the story of what Arado-built FW 190s looked like requires an understanding of where the aircraft sub-assemblies were produced, and where the final assembly of these parts took place. It would be easy work if there were just one final assembly location and one source for each aircraft component, but this is not the case. Within the Arado complex of factories at the height of production, there were two sources of wings, three sources of tail assemblies, three sources of fuselages, and at least three sources of engines and engine cowlings when considering F-8 production alone. As far as final assembly and testing is concerned, at least five airfields were involved at one time or another. From the middle of 1944 on, four airfields were involved in final assembly and testing. Each airfield involved in the final assembly received subassemblies only from certain producers based on the airfield’s location and need. This can make understanding the possible final appearance of the finished aircraft complicated. What makes this understanding more complicated are the results of the dispersal of parts manufacturing. Do not forget the complications of subassembly deliveries after the bombing of dispersed parts producers and final assembly sites. A clear image of what Arado built FW190s looked like during the last years of the war has been divined. Here, the analogy of assembling a puzzle without being able to see its whole original picture is appropriate. The found pieces fit together where they belonged, and enough pieces were retrieved to figure out what the missing pieces must have looked like. Research assembled enough photos and documents to enable the reverse engineering of the original picture of the puzzle, “so to speak”. This book and its series sisters are priceless resources if you are an enthusiast, scale-model builder, or historian.