Albatros D.III O.A.W in Ray's markings
Eduard 1/48

By: Tomasz Gronczewski

Franz Ray

The man

Franz Ray appeared above the trenches a few months after German scouts lost unquestionable air superiority. He joined Jasta 1 on October 1st 1917 and scored his first kill almost two months later. Because of unknown reasons on December 17th 1917 he was moved to Jastaschule 1 and spent there a month. On January 15th Franz Ray and an ace of Jasta Boelcke Max von Müller were assigned to form a nucleus of new Württemberg Jasta 28. Despite Jasta 28w was engaged in heavy fighting over Flanders, Ray failed to score until September 1917. But then his scoreboard started to rise rapidly. On September 23rd Ray joined acehood and in November his score stood at nine kills. In late 1917, shortly after USA had entered the war, Germans decided to change their defensive strategy and to restore air superiority by doubling number of Jastas from 40 to 80. This enterprise was called “Amerika Programm”. On December 23rd 1917 Jasta 49 was founded in Cottbus as one of the second run of Jastas. Franz Ray was nominated as a commander of the new outfit. Initially whole Jasta was equipped with obsolete Albatros D.IIIs, but later the outfit was re-equipped with agile Fokker D.VIIs. On March 27th 1918 Ray scored first victory for the Jasta (his 10th), and by the end of the war whole Jasta had been credited with 28 victories. This tally was achieved mainly thanks to three outfit’s aces: Ray (8 victories scored with Jasta 49), Brandstein (8) and Habich (7). Franz Ray remained a commander of the Jasta until the end of war, but in October he was temporarily moved to Germany to test new scouting aircraft. He did not return to the Jasta before the end of the war. After Ray’s departure Lt. Habich was acting as a deputy commander.

and the machine

Ray’s D.III belonged to late production D.III series manufactured by Ostdeutsche Albatros Werke located in Schneidemuhl (now north-central Poland). O.A.W. built Albatros scouts were equipped with distinctive curved rudder which proved to be so effective that became standard feature in all subsequent variants. Except of that Ray’s Albatros carried small airfoil mounted to the undercarriage axis and telescopic gunsight. Although Jasta 49 was known to carry rather colorful markings with distinctive snake wave motives, Ray decided to paint entire fuselage of his Albatross with uniform dark, probably black color.

Franz Ray’s scoreboard

Sources:

• Above the Lines

• Jasta Pilots

• Albatros Fighters in Action

The model

The new Eduard’s D.III kit looked so good in the box, and I had read so many superlative reviews about it that I decided to build a short series of three kits. Each kit had to represent totally different markings. After I had finished the first kit, Voss’ early D.III, I started preparation for the second: very late OAW built D.III flown by Franz Ray.

List of Ingredients:

• a 1/48th Eduard kit Albatros D.III Profipack (kit no. 8035) used as a basis

• an additional 1/48th Eduard P/E set for Albatros D.III (set no. 48 263) used to replace many kit’s parts

• a 1/48th Eduard kit Albatros D.Va Mailed Gauntlet used as a source of upper lozenge decals and wing crosses.

• 1/48th Techmod five color lozenge decal as a source of bottom lozenge decal

• various sprues used to replicate various details

• brass rod used to replicate construction pins of the undercarriage legs and for radiator piping

• 0.06 and 0.08mm fishing line used for rigging

• CA glue Super Attack used to glue virtually everything

• White wood glue Uhu used to attach windscreen

• tacking mass Uhu used for masking

• Tamiya masking tape used to simulate leather seat upholstery and for (surprise, surprise!) masking

• Custom vinyl masks used to paint crosses on fuselage and tail

• Thin vinyl foil used to make rib tapes

• Citadel Colour White Undercoat a white spray meant for priming white metal RPG figures here used to prime some details

• Humbrol enamels thinned with Testors airbrush thinner to perform basic paintwork

• Aeromaster white and black acrylics used to paint insignias and various details

• SnJ aluminum metalizer used to simulate natural metal effect

• Testors metalizers used to paint guns

• Pebeo artist oils thinned with turpentine used to apply wash

• Brown and white colored pencils used to simulate wood grain

• Various brown Tamiya acrylics used to simulate wood grain

• Lego bricks used to build construction stand

• Future Floor Wax used for all varnishing activities and during decal application

• Aeromaster Flat Clear used together with Future for final coating

• Microsol used for decal application

Initial construction

Interior:

Although I had an extra P/E set with many replacement brass parts I decided to build interior according to simpler Profipack receipt. Usage of P/E set would make cockpit construction much more sophisticated and would not provide me with serious advantage. On the other hand P/E fret included in Profipack provided most vital brass details.

I painted wooden parts with Humbrol 121. After they dried I marked wood grain with brown colored pencils and thinned brown Tamiya acrylics. Finally I sprayed everything with mixture of Tamiya Clear Yellow plus a bit of Tamiya Clear Orange.

Ammo drums were sprayed with SnJ.

All metal parts were sprayed with Humbrol 31 gray green and received a thin coat of Future to break matt appearance.

Control stick handles were painted with Humbrol 110 and overcoated with Tamiya Clear Yellow + Tamiya Clear Orange mixture.

Then I applied light wash of Pebeo sepia artist oil paint and light drybrushing using Tamiya matt Buff.

Finally a few touches of Testors Chrome Silver and Aeromaster Flat Black added necessary details.

Engine:

Entire engine was sprayed using Citadel Undercoat and then with SnJ. Then upper part was brush painted with Aeromaster Flat Black. Finally entire engine received light Pebeo sepia wash and was drybrushed slightly with Testors Burnt Steel metalizer.

Exhaust collector was sprayed with white Citadel Undercoat, brushed with Testors Burnt Steel and received ample wash of various brownish and reddish Pebeo tempera water colors. Air feeding system was attached to the engine in this stage while exhaust had to remain yet unattached.

Fuselage:

Having components ready I glued them into their places. When I was building my Voss’ kit I realized that it was better for gun supporting frame to be attached after fuselage halves had been glued. So this time I left it as before.

After I had glued both fuselage halves, I sanded it overall to hide joint butt and to remove all inspection panels. Then I rescribed some lost panel lines.

In order to facilitate future rigging, I drilled four parallel holes on the each board just above the place where the bottom wing was supposed to be glued later.

After final sanding and polishing I attached replacement P/E panels. Later, after painting entire fuselage with black I noticed that it was really a little sense to replace all panels. It would be enough to replace bottom details and plates strengthening cabane struts.

BTW, note that attaching points of cabane struts are molded incorrectly: the rectangular plates with central holes should be attached BELOW strut attaching points, not around them. This is one of the reasons why to replace them by P/E parts.

After fuselage was ready I separated elevator from horizontal tail piece and attached both horizontal stabilizers to the fuselage. Then I attached bottom tail skid pod.

Finally I re-drilled all struts and legs attachment holes to facilitate future construction.

Top wing:

As I had decided to reposition ailerons significantly this time, I had to remove them completely and to glue them back. While doing that I noticed that when the left aileron had been marked by Eduard correctly, the recessed line marking the right had been mismatched. Upper line is not positioned directly over bottom line. Everyone should take special care when attempting to separate right aileron.

As Ray’s Albatros had lozenged wings I decided to remove radiator from the wings and to use brass radiator taken out of extra D.III P/E set.

Radiator:

I separated P/E radiator surfaces from the fret and sanded edges over. Top surface of the radiator was carefully bended over a big plastic tube.

The Radiator header was modified according to Steve Perry’s method and glued to upper radiator face. Both radiator parts were then oversprayed with Citadel Undercoat, polished and sprayed with SnJ. After a thin coat of Future had been applied, a light wash of Pebeo artist Sepia thinned with turpentine was applied.

Struts:

I separated all struts and undercarriage from the sprues and cleaned them off. As I remember trouble with fitting undercarriage to earlier Voss’ D.III, I removed the construction pins from the undercarriage legs, drilled holes and replaced pins with short brass rods.

In order to facilitate future rigging I drilled holes through very upper ends of the cabane struts, and V-struts as well as in rear bottom part of undercarriage legs.

Ray’s Albatros had unusual airfoil attached to the undercarriage, and this part could be found in separate Eduard p/e set. I started to wind this part around a file handle to give it a smooth curvature and eventually wound up the piece around the axis. After it was glued, I sprayed it with Citadel Undercoat and sanded it in order to improve smoothness.

All ready struts, and undercarriage parts were then sprayed with Humbrol 31, and coated with a very thin coat of Future to reduce their matt appearance.

Prop and skid:

Both propeller and tail skid were painted with Humbrol 121 (Light sand) and received some colored pencil artwork. Then thin strokes of various transparent brown acrylics were brushed over. Finally Tamiya Clear Yellow plus a drop of Tamiya Clear Orange mixture was applied to simulate shellac. Overall I was not happy of the result because of bad wood grain pattern that I achieved. I think my earlier Voss’ prop was by far better.

Spandau duet:

I loved those P/E LMG sets made by Eduard. I removed front parts of the plastic guns and attached rolled P/E grills as well as P/E handles and front plates. Then I attached drilled plastic barrel nozzles and sprayed whole thingies with Testors Exhaust Metalizer. Final coat of Future gave the guns a protection and more metallic appearance. Very subtle Testors Burnt Metal Metalizer drybrushing and very light Artist Oil Sepia wash gave the guns final appearance.

Gunsight:

Ray ordered to attach telescope gunsight to his Albatros. I scratchbuilt it from a few stretched sprues and painted it overall black using Humbrol 85 Coal Black.

External paint job

Fuselage:

I masked an engine with Tamiya masking tape and I wish I had done it before the engine had been mounted into fuselage. The cockpit hole as well as the gun compartment were filled with yellow Uhu tacky mass that had been bought in office equipment store.

The whole fuselage with horizontal surfaces attached was sprayed with Humbrol 85 Coal Black.

Originally I hoped to use Eduard’s vinyl masks to paint white cross outlines, but quickly I realized that they were too small. So, I prepared a design in CorelDRAW and ordered custom vinyl mask at the street banner workshop.

I applied ready cross masks onto the fuselage and Tamiya masking tape onto horizontal tail. Then I sealed all remaining surfaces with widest Tamiya tape in order to avoid any reluctant white overspray. It is extremely important when any contrasting color is being sprayed over a base. I used Aeromaster white to apply white markings but I was a bit disappointed. Now I fill that Tamiya acrylics are much better for masking job.

Wings:

In order to prepare better basis for lozenge decals I sprayed wings with Citadel Undercoat and polished it using Miniplex tool (very similar to Dremel tool but smaller and powered by low-voltage electricity). Then I wetted wings with Microsol/Future mixture and applied five color lozenge. For the upper lozenge I used the decal robbed out of Eduard D.V kit. But bottom lozenge of the kit looked somehow jerky. It was simply to vivid. Thus I decided to use latest Techmod set. During lozenge application I treated it ample with Microsol. After the wings dried completely I painted them with Future. The lozenge decals adhered so good to the surfaces that I was able to remove imperfections using 600 grit sandpaper. Then I made touch ups using various Humbrol colors and applied final coat of future.

As I had had no light blue rib tapes I decided to make my own using thinnest self-adhesive vinyl foil I had found. First I matted the foil using 1000 grit sandpaper. Then I sprayed the foil using my own light Humbrol RLM 76 mixture. I wanted to achieve light blue gray shade rather than rich cyan blue color. I didn’t believe in blue/pink rib tapes theory because of their little technological sense. So that I decided to make overall light blue tapes, cut the foil into long stripes and applied them onto wings wrapping them around wings.

I read somewhere that the tape was fixed at the leading edge. So I applied tapes only on the front edges of the wings. Now I know that I was wrong and trailing edges should be fitted with the tape as well. I have to correct it sometime later.

I noticed that such method of rib tapes application was a few times faster, than decal application, but anyway the rib tapes seemed to be too much embossed. I doubt if I’ll decide to follow this way any more, unless I will find thinner foil.

Then I applied top crosses taken out of D.V box. Bottom crosses had to wait until rigging would have been accomplished.

Finally I gave the wings (except of bottom surfaces of lower wing that had no crosses yet) a shot of Future and a top coat of Aeromaster Flat/Future mixture.

After the wings dried I applied P/E radiator surfaces, glued ailerons to the upper wing and I renewed rigging holes in the lower wings.

Vertical tailplane:

First I sprayed entire part with Citadel Undercoat, and polished it like the wings. Then I sprayed it with Aeromaster white and finally sprayed black crosses using custom vinyl mask.

Wheels:

According to the common knowledge the wheel disks of Ray’s Albatros were supposed to be off-white. Looking at the photo I noticed that they were really darker than other white elements of the aircraft. They looked just like light blue ones of other earlier Albatri. I couldn’t find any sense in applying odd off-white color to the real thing. On the other hand wheels looked very fatigued comparing to the overall fresh Albatros. I assumed that the wheels had been taken out of an older Albatros and sprayed them with light blue.

I used my own my own mixture of Humbrol 65/Humbrol 46 to match better Methuen number.

Then I masked the disks using modified Eduard vinyl masks for WW I wheels and Humbrol Maskol. The tires were sprayed with Humbrol 64. After the wheels dried completely I applied a thin coat of Future to discs only and gave them heavy wash using French Pebeo artist oil (Sepia shade) thinned with turpentine.

Final construction

Fuselage:

After removing masking I attached ready machine guns, telescope gunsight and vertical tailplane.

Upper wing attachment:

First I glued cabane struts, and until glue dried, I quickly dry-fitted top wing to position struts correctly. Unfortunately or I misaligned the wing a bit, or cabane struts were of wrong shape, and later I had to drill new holes in the wing .5mm forward the old ones in order to mount fit cabane strut properly. It caused additional work to remove old holes. After cabane struts had dried completely I attached top wing with no further problems.

Undercarriage:

While doing my first Albatros kit (Voss’ D.III) I observed that proper undercarriage alignment was worst moment. So this time I decided to prepare a construction stand. I used simple Lego bricks to build an installation. On the flat squared basis two towers were built to support top wing, and to prevent its movement. Two other lower towers were built to support horizontal stabilizers. One tower blocked the kit from the back. One long flat brick was attached just below an wheel axis was supposed to be. The latter part helped a lot to align visually whole undercarriage. Having such sophisticated building built I had no problems with undercarriage alignment. After the undercarriage had dried I applied a few reels of gray painted fishing line to simulate rubber bungee chord shock absorber. I think that the idea was good but I wish I performed it better.

V-struts:

Because of my rigging method V-struts had to be glued in this very moment to the upper wing. No lower wings were attached yet.

Rigging part 1:

Before attaching of lower wings I started rigging.

First I pre-fabricated components for each rigging line. Each of them consisted of 3 mm long turnbuckle with a long fishing line tied up. Then I pre-painted all lines with Aeromaster black.

Then my rigging procedure proceeded as follows:

1. The turnbuckle was glued into inner hole in the lower fuselage and the opposite end was pulled through a hole in upper cabane strut (four such items were needed)
2. A plain fishing line was pulled through the same cabane strut hole. It had to be long enough to be pulled through the outer lower wing (four such items were needed)
3. I reverted the model and put it on the edge of the table, and then I caught the line no. r1 with self locking tweezers. The weight of the tweezers tightened the line and I could fix the lines (r1) and (r2) to the cabane strut with a droplet of CA glue (four such actions were needed).
4. A new turnbuckle was glued into outer hole in the lower fuselage and the opposite end was pulled through a hole in the upper V-strut. No glue was applied yet to the V-struts (four such items were needed).
5. An another one new turnbuckle was fixed to the point where rear undercarriage leg had been glued to the fuselage. The opposite end had to be pulled though a hole drilled in the bottom leg, but the hole was obscured by an airfoil and I had to attach it to the leg somewhere else (two such items were needed).

Lower wing:

Attachment of the lower wings to the fuselage and V-struts was extremely easy.

Rigging part 2:

6. The plain line was attached to a hole in front fuselage and pulled through a hole in outer lower wing and weighted with self locking tweezers. No glue was applied to the lower wing yet (two such actions were needed).
7. The line (r2) was pulled through the very same hole in the outer lower wing like the line mentioned in step (r6), weighted with self locking tweezers and glued to lower wing together with line (r6) using CA glue (four such actions were needed two front lines together with line (r6), two rear lines without line (r6)).
8. The line (r4) that had been already pulled through upper V-struts were weighted and glued (four such actions were needed).
9. Tail control wire was attached inside rectangular opening in the rear fuselage, tightened and glued to the control horn (four such actions were needed).
10. Aileron control line was attached to a hole in upper wing, pulled through lower wing, weighted and glued (four such actions were needed).

Finally all excess lines were cut using knife, and the holes were masked with touches of appropriate paints.

Now time for the bottom insignias came.

Although top crosses were laid correctly, the tips of both bottom ones rolled up and failed to straighten despite treating them with a lot of water. I really started to hate Eduard decals.

Final steps:

I gave bottom surfaces a shot of Aeromaster Flat / Future mixture, attached wheels and prop with spinner. My next Albatros scout was at last done.

Conclusions

So far I have built seven 1/48 WW I kits, two of them being Eduard’s D.IIIs. I think that this Albatros kit is second easiest WW I kit I have approached surpassed only by Eduard’s Pfalz D.III. The construction was trouble less except of following items:

• gun mount is inaccurate and difficult to attach,
• it is quite difficult to achieve proper geometry of undercarriage,
• it is hard to reposition right aileron,

Now I am finishing the last of the planned D.III trio: Allmenröder’s red scout.

The gallery

It was after I had finished the model and had taken photos, when I realized that my cookup subject was black :o) So it is difficult to see any details on the following pictures:

Other Cookup pages of Tomasz Gronczewski

Werner Voss | Karl Allmenröder | cookup subjects comparison