Swastika Tail Insignia. Can anyone help ID the aircraft it came from please?

At the risk of thread drift, I have often wanted to ask the question…….Will it be at Legends?

Hei, a Ju 88 tail under restoration

Seriously Mathieu, would you mind opening another discussion with further information? Hopefully, the restored aircraft will be a flyer!

Best regards, Aerial

harrison987

That is a nice piece, any chance of a history lesson?

is it one of the Norway Ju88s?

Baz

Hei,

Nice image of a Ju 88 tail under restoration

Regards,

Mathieu.

Scotty Mac…..

Now THAT is original……!

Nice.

HI Scotty Mac,

I am the original poster of the other thread. When the seller started advertising it on eBay, he and I spoke over email or quite a bit. After I explained it was fake, he dropped all contact with me.

To answer your below request, I have a 100% original Ju88 tail fin with 100% original paint, the data tag, and history.

I have attached a pic below. If you are interested in more information, PM me and we can discuss… 🙂

Mike

Thanks everyone for your help

This leaves me still looking for an original german WW2 aircraft insignia, which is a mission I have been on for years. If anyone knows of where one might be available I’d appreciate hearing.

Thanks everyone for your help

The USA dealer has agreed to a 100% refund, which given his place in the market I’m confident of getting. He sells large volumes of quality WW2 militaria and appears to have been burnt by this as well. This leaves me still looking for an original german WW2 aircraft insignia, which is a mission I have been on for years. If anyone knows of where one might be available I’d appreciate hearing. Thanks again. I have learnt a valuable lesson from this experience, which is do my homework first!

I am very pleased for you that you have got your money back and pleased if I have played a small part in helping you achieve that.

Sadly, original pieces like this are now exceedingly rare and exceedingly expensive. There are also some very good fakes out there. A now deceased artist, Alfie Batt, produced some particularly fine examples although it has to be said that he produced them as fakes and never passed them off as anything else. They were usually commissioned pieces for customers who wanted a specific unit badge to hang on the wall. Mostly they were on ORIGINAL German aircraft skin material, but often you would find you had a Me109 cowling emblem painted on a piece of He111 outer wing!! Problems came later, of course, when original owners got tired of them and passed them on when invariably they were then sold as the real deal.

More recently we have seen cases (some discussed on this forum) where verifiable items from aircraft like the Do17 have been “modified” to represent a fragment of swastika panel and then sold off, for example, as being from an Me109 in an apparently deliberate attempt to decieve. However, that issue has been a somewhat sensitive one on this forum and is best not discussed any further, save to say that misrepresentation in relation to such insignia is pretty rife.

Caveat Emptor!

The collectors guild occasionaly have pieces come up for sale. There are much more interesting bits of luftwaffe aircraft to be had than cut up bits of hakenkreuz and for much cheaper prices too!

Thanks everyone for your help

The USA dealer has agreed to a 100% refund, which given his place in the market I’m confident of getting. He sells large volumes of quality WW2 militaria and appears to have been burnt by this as well. This leaves me still looking for an original german WW2 aircraft insignia, which is a mission I have been on for years. If anyone knows of where one might be available I’d appreciate hearing. Thanks again. I have learnt a valuable lesson from this experience, which is do my homework first!

My first reaction was nah !

I think your first reaction is most important, i was going to say wait for Tangmeres contribution, but reading the other forum thread I see he has condemned it absolutely.

Enough said I think !

Thank you, Tim.

Yes, if you look at my contribution on the other forum….well….there is not much more I can add, really.

I am sorry to say that this is a fake. 100% certainly so. I wouldn’t part with even a £1.00 of my money for it. Sadly, its not even worth that as scrap.

A pity that people get ripped off like this, but a familiar tale on this forum already I’m afraid.

The thing that really doesn’t convince me is the orientation of the swastika itself in relation to the panels.

I had a quick look at the fins of the allied planes that were captured during the war, and although similar, they don’t seem to match anyone in particular, especially because of the panel orientation.

The construction technique also seems of american or british manifacture to me.. there’s no major evidence of it actually, but it’s a feeling I get by looking at the flushed rivets, the panel overlapping and the internal structure..

My “guts” opinion is that someone got a bit of a panel from an US plane, painted it green and stenciled the swastika over it.

Swastika Tail Insignia

Thanks everyone for your help. As I said, I bought it off a US militaria dealer, via his website and was provided with a written money back guarantee of authenticity. Given his position I think he has bought this in good faith and sold it on that basis. Unfortunately… I am trying to prove or disprove that one way or another so I can start the refund process. Would anyone know if or where the numbers on the tail fin can be traced? Thanks again for all of your help.

My first reaction was nah !

I think your first reaction is most important, i was going to say wait for Tangmeres contribution, but reading the other forum thread I see he has condemned it absolutely.

Enough said I think !

the swastika spraywork looks totally bogus to me, there’s no patina whatsoever and the white shows no yellowing.

The panel structure doesn’t remind me of any particular plane, but considering that it would be a vertical fin allegedly, I can’t think of a single plane that has such a thin one (unless a buzzbomb maybe?).

My rule is that if it smells fake don’t buy it, you’d always look at it and not be sure…

I have a three issues with this item :-
1. The part of the structure that runs through the middle of the complete item(visible on the other forum pictures) is the fin spar, possible one of two, but would run vertically or slightly angled back if it were from a swept fin. The swastika is painted with its edge aligned with the spar. If you rotate the swastika to stand on one corner(as they were) the spar would be at 45degrees to the vertical. I cannot find a german WW2 aircraft where the fin would be like that.
2. The ‘L’ sections, or spar caps are extrusion, not folded metal. Did the Germans use extrusion in aircraft construction. It is very common not but I dont know when its use started.
3. Looking at how the original item was cut would suggest they used a band saw, so the complete fin would have been placed flat on the cutting table of the saw. Just seems to me to have been an unlikely method for the part to have been salvaged.

Richard

If the O.P.’s name indicates his heritage, it is surprising that he parted with his money for this!;)

It doesnt “look” old enough to be 60yrs old…. and the swastika appears to be painted on with a spray gun ???

Would spray guns have been used in those days for painting aircraft markings?

That just looks absolutely wrong, at first I thought it of a Cessna or summit, but now thinking completey created in a garage?

If that is from a German aircraft I`m a monkeys uncle. Its more likely to be from a Bosch washing machine (a German company at least) with a paint job courtesy of a machine mart compressor.
I would say you`ve been ripped right off. Go to who you bought it from and say you want your money back. I surmise you did not pay buttons for it.

Having read the comments from the forum link above……….

The thing is if you had this on the table and were offered the chance to buy it as a genuine item would you part with your hard earned cash as the real deal?

Personally I wouldn’t as it just doesn’t look right to me so therefore my suspicions are that is a “doctored” fake and I would want more professional advice on the item.

Not unusual because it is generally accepted that items of value will always bring in the Fakers and that is not just restricted to historic aircraft parts either.

Hei,

There is a discusion about this piece at another forum:
http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=17519

Perhaps that helps you a little.

Best regards,

Mathieu.