Fw 190D-9 flown by Theo Nibel of 10./Jg 54 on January 1, 1945. On that day, Nibel was taking part in the infamous Operation Bodenplatte. Despite being tasked with leading the second element against the airfield at Grimbergen, Belgium, an engine that was reluctant to start put Nibel at the rear of the formation and the last Dora from III/Jg 54 to reach the target. He made a strafing attack on a twin engine aircraft while taking heavy AAA fire and his engine lost power and eventually stopped running. At only 100 meters of altitude, Nibel was forced to ditch in a nearby farm. He was promptly taken prisoner and his Dora became the first of the type captured by the Allies. What they found when examining the engine was not damage from gunfire, but the carcass of a dove that was lodged in the radiator - cracked and leaking from the impact with the bird.
Despite being gone over thoroughly by the Allies, the exact description of the aircraft paint work remains unclear to me. Most artist profiles and models have elements that in my opinion are dubious or outright incorrect. The most common features I dispute are yellow painted rudder and lower cowl as well as the wings being painted with two-tone green camouflage. Nibel's Dora was an early production D-9 built on Focke Wulf's main assembly line, thus the camouflage pattern would be uniform for all components. Meaning that if the wings were indeed two-tone green, it was a field applied job. The lower cowl is probably not yellow as it's tone seems to match the other sections of fuselage. The rudder is definitely not yellow. I elected to paint Nibel's Dora in the standard scheme of RLM 75 gray-violet and 82 olive green over 75 light blue.
