Section of night lozenge camouflage aircraft fabric : Imperial German Air Service

22.5 x 20.5 cm piece of linen fabric cut from the flying surface of a German aircraft. The uppermost (external) surface is almost black in appearance, to the extent that the different lozenge colours of the printed fabric are virtually indistinguishable from one another. This appearance is possibly as a result of the dope which covers it having been pigmented with a dark colour. The dope does not appear to have aged or yellowed to as great a degree as other, unpigmented samples in the AWM's collection. The true colours of the pre-printed fabric are partly apparent on the underside of the linen, where the colours have bled through. Two colours are distinguishable: dark purple, and dark navy blue. Pale lozenges are also apparent. This indicates the presence of a third colour, where the dye has not penetrated the fabric to a large extent. The item is well preserved apart from crease marks. On the reverse has been written "Doped fabric from German Warplane WWI".

Towards the middle 1916, Germany started to adopt pre-printed colour fabric for their aircraft, making use of repeating patterns of coloured polygons. Modern researchers have termed the material 'lozenge fabric'. By April 1917 the new fabric was in general use and the Siemens Schuckert Werke was instructed in its use.

Two main schemes schemes appear to have been adopted: a daylight and a night scheme. This sample appears to have been cut from an aircraft clad in a night-time scheme, and is the only such piece in the AWM collection.

The daylight scheme made use of a darker colour pattern for upper surfaces and the sides of fuselages, and a lighter pattern to be used on the lower surfaces of wings and the bottom of fuselages. Despite this, there were deviations. The Albatros D.Va in the AWM collection, for instance, had the lower wings covered with both plain and lozenge fabric, the wings being then painted in the previous camouflage pattern for plain covered aircraft, while the under surface of the upper wing was covered in light coloured five colour lozenge fabric. The AWM’s Pfalz D.XII had the light coloured pattern fabric on both the top and bottom surfaces of the lower wings. Other captured aircraft are reported having similar use of the fabric.

Within the daylight scheme, there are two lozenge patterns known for pre-printed colour cloth: a four colour and a five colour pattern of polygons. Both patterns appear on the two original German aircraft in the AWM’s collection.

The five colour system contained 27 polygons that repeated laterally along the bolt of fabric. The four colour system used 21 polygons. Most of the polygons are hexagonal in shape but each pattern contains a four sided polygon and the edges of the bolt have small cut-off polygons.

The use of pre-printed fabric was introduced to reduce the use of dopes, both as a means of circumventing restrictions imposed by the Allied blockade, and to reduce the weight of doped wings.