Hataka Early Luftwaffe Paint Review

By Michael Benolkin

Review

Here is a new paint company that recently opened their doors. Hataka from Poland has released five new paint sets, each with a different theme. In this release, we have the four standard colors used by the early Luftwaffe between 1937 and 1940. If you're trying to get authentic colors on your Battle of Britain Luftwaffe subjects, this set shows promise.

This set contains four 17ml bottles of paint with a set of colors that cover the majority of early Luftwaffe subjects. The colors in this set include:

• A023 Grey RLM 02
• A015 Black Green RLM 70
• A017 Dark Green RLM 71
• A029 Light Blue RLM 65/78

There are three factors to consider when chosing your paints: color accuracy, paint performance, and price. How do these colors look against the RLM color standards?

Color	RLM Color	Hataka Color
RLM 02
RLM 65
RLM 70
RLM 71

The first question to ask is 'which RLM standard?' The table above is based upon the Luftwaffe Color Chart published by Eagle Editions Ltd, 1998 which is the standard that most closely matches these colors. Each paint manufacturer must take a leap of faith and choose one of the several published standards where, for example, the Testors and Pollyscale colors were based upon the classic The Official Monogram Painting Guide to German Aircraft 1935-1945 which has since been revised by co-author Ken Merrick. For a quick comparison of the four prominant standards, look here.

I selected the RLM02 (A023) color and gave it a sniff. These acrylics do not have the same smell as Vallejo, Italeri, AKAN and others so I wondered how they would perform. I pulled out a surplus rotor blade that had been cleaned, shook the bottle (it is so nice to have the mixing ball inside) and stirred the paint. First I put a few drops into the cup of my airbrush and shot it at 10 psi without thinning. The paint went on smoothly and without any problem. I thinned another few drops of paint with the homemade thinner which is similar to Tamiya acrylic thinner and stirred. This batch went on even smoother but with consistent coverage. The Hataka acrylics respond just as the other brands above with the Tamiya thinner and even using Windex to clean the airbrush. When the paint had dried on the rotor blade, I burnished down some Tamiya masking tape and then pulled - none of the paint pulled up.

I digitized the colors and looked at how they compare to the various color standards and I like what I see. It appears that the RLM colors line up nicely with the later analyses, namely Michael Ullmann's work, but until I can see the late war Luftwaffe colors, all I can say is that these look good so far.

My sincere thanks to Hataka Hobby for this review sample!