[Leo Etgen]

Hi Milos

Many thanks for your response and the link to the discussion on Hyperscale. I am glad that you found the post interesting. I was looking at the two photographs in question showing the two sides of the aircraft and noticed that in the one depicting the port side of the fighter the shadow of the aircraft is very strong suggesting that the sunlight was very bright at that moment and thus the image resulted somewhat overexposed. However, in the one depicting the starboard side of the fighter the shadows appear to be quite weak thereby suggesting that the sunlight was reduced at that moment and thus the image appears naturally darker. Nevertheless, I do agree with you that the area behind the exhaust panel and the edge of the windscreen quarter panel is much darker than the corresponding area on the port side. This appears to me to be the result of over-painting rather than exhaust staining but I very well might be wrong. I have no idea why this was done but perhaps some sort of repair also involving the engine cowling was performed at some point in time? Unfortunately, the loss lists for 1944 have been lost and all we have available are the casualty lists so it is unknown if this aircraft was involved in some sort of incident.

Horrido!

Leo