[Harold Lake]

At the risk of making pejorative statements, I seriously think we need to stand back and be honest with ourselves when it comes to defining marking colors painted on German aircraft 65 years ago. In this case, how do we know the dark color of the Me 262's checkerboard was Black? Why not Dark Blue (color # 24)? I mean, if you look at contemporary photos of American aircraft, and if you didn't know better, wouldn't you think the US national aircraft insignia was actually in black and white instead of Insignia Blue (dark blue) and Insignia White? If you take a hard look at original photos of "Yellow 5", for example, you will see that the aircraft's original checkerboard pattern was incomplete when the aircraft fell into US hands. Yet, some authors/publishers with photoshop skills have, on their own, either added the "missing color" or made the checkerboard a solid single band. This is crossing the line at best. At the very least we need the ability to cross examine the witness, do we not?

Hal