Late 2025, a set of new and fascinating Komet photos surfaced. It showed a Komet with number 12, presumably blue
with a white outline. It will tentatively be called 'Blue 12'.
G.R. Morrison posted the contact sheet shown below on the Hyperscale Plane Talking forum. It's a beautiful study of a Komet take-off run and lift-off. G.R. has been examining Luftwaffe photos since the mid-sixties, and worked on a database of all known Luftwaffe aircraft. But he did not record the sources of tens of thousands of photos, therefore the source of this contact sheet is unknown. The copyright situation was discussed in the forum thread, and G.R. Morrison was OK with using this unique material on this site.
First, I tried 'JPEG artifact removal', but it made the picture worse. I scaled up the contact sheet 133% vertically to correct the aspect ratio problem, then tried to improve each photo, and scaled them up mercilessly to 800 pixels width. Vertical film scratches around the Komet were removed with a clone stamp. The first three, and last two stills look very similar, but are different stills. They also have different contrast and are therefore of interest.
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The most recent and complete Werknummer list can be found in 'Me 163 Raketenjäger - Entwicklung - Technik - Einsatz' by Stephen Ransom and Hans-Hermann Cammann from 2023. The production list (pages 384-387) only has codes in white, yellow and blue - no red or green. However, the training flights log on pages 390-394 do contain a 'Green 4' and a 'Red 13'. If the latter is ignored, the '12' code highly likely blue, so I'll call it 'Blue 12'. This in turns possibly yields the WNr, since there is only one 'Blue 12': WNr 440016, from Klemm production.
'Me 163 Raketenjäger - Entwicklung - Technik - Einsatz' shows that 440016 was in post-production flight test at Jesau in early August 1944. Flight testing was moved to Oranienburg, and for 440016 it continued there to the end of August. Delivered to Brandis, first flight there noted at 28 September, as 'Blue 12' of Erg.St./JG400, piloted by Reinhard Opitz. One other flight noted on 12 October. Last flight on 17 December, ending in some kind of crash, killing Hermann Giesl. Location is listed as Krasice, 44 km north-east of Udetfeld. Unit is listed as 13./EJG2.
Some observations:
this Komet has dense mottling, that mostly consists of short stripes
the canopy frame and rear-view window frame are not mottled, and stand out
the last two photos show that the left wing was painted in dark solid camouflage colors. A trace of the white iron cross can be seen too
the number '12' is painted on in an unusual position, right below the rudder balance mass.
there's a strange non-mottled patch right in front of the number '12'. This patch could be caused by the overpainting of the large 440xxx Werknummer, that most the Komets from this series had. See for example 440013 Eisenmann crash
Some observations:
steam from the turbopumps is clearly visible, exiting from under the fuselage. The rocket motor exhaust is invisible
the Komet has an uncovered tail wheel, with a tire that has a light-colored tire wall
the skid appears to be near full extension. The Komet was filmed near the lift-off point, so the wings are already carrying a substantial part of the weight
it appears that this Komet has the small outlets under the wing root, as seen on White 05. It's just a small black dot in the noise, but it's visible in both last photos, in line with the rear side of the iron cross on the fuselage
The first three stills clearly show that there's a dip between the camera and the runway. Maybe this could help the identification of the airfield. In my memory, Brandis has a very flat landscape.