As I noted here a couple of months ago, I was looking for back-up help re Luftwaffe winter camouflage for an HE-111Z, the double Heinkel intended to pull the giant German glider. I bought the Hasegawa kit, whose box art and box photo of a finished model showed a scruffy white paint job on the upper surfaces. Instructions inside simply called for white painted over the standard RLM dark green and black green camouflage.
At first I was concerned whether the HE-111Z ever really had winter camouflage after reading that it was intended to fly into Russia and bring out German troops after the siege of Stalingrad, but because runways of sufficient size were not available in Russia, the planes never did fly in; nor were they ready to do so until Jan 1943. It seems reasonable that the winter camouflage was applied for that aborted mission but I couldn't be sure. One reader in this forum posted two shots of an HE-111Z on a snowy runway and it definitely looked like it had been treated to white paint, though in a rather slapdash manner.
Other research indicates that if winter camouflage was applied to Luftwaffe planes, it was indeed quick and slapdash, probably not sprayed on but swabbed on with brushes and probably mops of water-based paint over the green camouflage. This would show immediate patchiness and if the plane spent any time at all in winter weather, that water paint was going to wear badly and soon. So I was prepared to use winter camouflage, but how to go about it? I experimented with a scrap Heinkel from earlier days, first simply spraying white over the green paint, which looked OK but not really worn (see photo of both planes below).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69066798@N03/6281224919/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69066798@N03/6281224401/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69066798@N03/6281224263/in/photostream
Then I dabbed blotches on with cotton balls., but these looked too pronounced. Next I used the cotton ball technique directly on the green paint (which incidentally seems like a good technique for the truly blotchy Japanese Army camouflage sometimes seen).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69066798@N03/6281739566/in/photostream
Next I lightly sprayed over that. I liked the results very much, so I went ahead with the technique on the new model, using a touch-up of white here and there with a stiff small paintbrush. I did not paint the canopy and glass framed parts because from what I could tell from photos, the Luftwaffe painters didn't bother. I then put decals on and I'm delighted with the results. Let me know what you think.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69066798@N03/6281740326/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69066798@N03/6281740200/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69066798@N03/6281224613/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69066798@N03/6281739942/in/photostream