Monday 10 May 2010

Luftwaffe profiles (Konrad Bauer, Hans Weik, Wilhem Moritz, Grislawski, Kennel etc )


Bf109 G-6 flown by Hptm Gerd Stamp, Gkr. I./JG 300, summer 1944

 I'm not a big fan of profile artwork nowadays - unless its very well done. For example Mark Styling's Luftwaffe images are especially poor. Once upon a time I did a bit of 'artwork' - some of it was even published, but I quickly gave up since I simply couldn't spare the five hours it took me to create my illustrations. I got fed up with nudging individual pixels around the screen. Of course you can tell that from the quality, but at the time I was happy enough with them. In fact lots of my profiles are still floating around the web, so I thought I'd bring together some of my own artwork - which I've collected from other sites, thanks guys - on my own site. And say what you like about them, I reckon my Karl-Heinz Langer  G-6 of III./JG3 is miles better than Mark Styling's effort! Click on the images for a slightly larger image ..if you dare

FW 190 A-7 'White 9 + ' of Hptm. Alfred Grislawski, 1./J.G.1, January 1944




Hans Weik was Staffelkapitän of 10./JG 3. Attacking B-17s raiding Memmingen on 18 July 1944 he was wounded by return fire while flying Fw 190A-8/R2 (W.Nr. 680 747) "White 7". He flew "White 7" from 27 June to 18 July 1944 returning two of his 36 total victories. His wounds were serious enough to keep Weik from any further front line duties. On 27 July, Oberleutnant Weik was awarded the Ritterkreuz for 36 victories. In April 1945, Weik was transferred to III./ EJG 2 at Lechfeld to train on the Me 262 jet fighter.







Hans Ifland, IV./JG3 April 1944 (reference photo in Prien 'Chronik einer Jagdgruppe')


Karl-Heinz Langer, Staffelkapitän 7./JG3 October 1943. Ignore the model pic(above), the mottle looked absolutely nothing like that !

Walther Dahl's 'blue 13' - the cowl emblem was layered into the picture after scanning it in from a decal sheet printing - yep, even 'real' profile artists take these sort of shortcuts ! Published in Scale Aircraft Modelling, vol 23 issue 1, March 2001



FW 190 A-8 W.Nr 171 789 'Black << + -' of Major Karl Kennel, II./S.G.2, Kitzingen, Germany, 8 May 1945