Major Walter Sigel’s Ju 87R-2 from Stab I./StG 3 – The Aircraft

This is my first post and will be the first part of a series of articles ( at least I hope it will work that way) documenting my build of the Ju 87R-2 flown by Major Walter Sigel Commanding Officer (Grupenkomandeur) from I./St.G 3 in the colours of the Stabsstaffel during his time in Greece 1941. I haven't seen many (actually any) builds of his Berta (of which the R-2 is based on) which is odd as it has some attractive markings.

Researching markings is one of my favored part in building a scale model and I am always amazed how much misinformation is around - and Sigel's R-2 in a good example.

There is a well known picture of Sigel's R-2 which is published in many publications.

And most profiles show this aircraft like this.

Captions for this picture place it to France in early 41, Bulgaria in April 41, Zemun (near Belgrade) in Yugoslavia in Autumn 41 and Greece in 41 depending where the picture is published!

But white theater markings just don't add up for the places this picture was apparently taken, so I asked the question on Hyperscale if someone could shed some light on this. In addition, the green Winkel (chevron) is missing on many profiles and the squadron batch is white and not yellow.

The chevron is clearly visible on another picture taken at the same day.

And Georg Morrison had an explanation which is rather interesting: "This is part of a series of lined-up I/St.G 3 machines (S1+AB, S1+CB, S1+NH, among others) taken after the Balkans / Crete campaign in southern Greece (possibly Crete) in early November 41.

The yellow Balkan theater markings had been overpainted and white theater markings applied for the unit's move to Derna in North Africa in mid-November 1941.

Depending on the quality / vintage of the print, you can see a tonal difference (the paint is 'flatter' or 'more matte') on the cowlings. The area beneath the radiator was still yellow - there's some film footage in which the bright color beneath the radiator 'pops out' at the eye of the viewer as the formation passes above. The fuselage bands were white, albeit not as bright as the factory-applied fuselage cross."

The flat paint is indeed visible on both pictures above and of interest is also that this aircraft also had yellow wheel pants tips, which wasn't common.

I found this picture below on the web and have never seen it published anywhere.

It shows most likely Sigel’s aircraft in Balkan theater markings photographed in May 41 at Argos in Greece. Of interest are the white outlined green individual letters A on top of the wings and the yellow elevators - and it does have the yellow wheel pants tips too!

And implementing Georg Morrison's information, the aircraft in the first picture looked most likely like this.

Not often do you see Luftwaffe aircraft with yellow AND white theater markings!

My intention is to build Sigel's aircraft first in the full Balkan theater markings as seen on Argos in May 41. And after taking a series of pictures, I intend to do what happened to the real aircraft and change it by overpainting the relevant parts as described to the way it looked before the transfer to North Africa in November 41.

After writing this article I came across this picture

Looks to be a still of a movie clip. Even though not the aircraft covered here, it does prove that on some aircraft the yellow on the engine wasn't fully repainted.

Thanks for looking and please share your thought.
Cheers, Peter