[Jerry Crandall]

Hi guys;
Steve Scheflin was way ahead of his time as he turned up a color slide of "White 5" Fw 190 A-8 with Red/Yellow bands but in the reverse order from the 'normal' JG 301 sequence. More and more photos of these reverse order color bands that were known to have been in JG 301 kept turning up. For instance, "White 5" Fw 190 A-8, 2 "Blue 9" Fw 190 A-8s, "Black <" Fw 190 A-8 and "Black <4" Fw 190 A-8. All of these have the Yellow band at the rear and the Red band to the front.

During our interview with JG 301 veterans, we found out why - here is a quote from the story written by Roderich Cescotti, the Gruppenkommandeur of II./JG 301 and T.O. of JG 301 that he wrote for my forthcoming Dora book: "Some Focke-Wulf aircraft we received from JG 11 had Yellow bands painted around the rear of the fuselage. To save time and paint, we simply added the Red band in front of the existing Yellow band, resulting in the reversal of our normal sequence of Yellow/Red." This was also confirmed by the Geschwaderkommodore Fritz Auffhammer who had some revolutionary ideas about markings and identification in his Geschwader, JG 301. More detailed information will be covered in my Dora book.
Cheers,
Jerry