Romanian PZL P 24?, is that a Romanian plane?

[Agarici]

Please take a look at the 5th photo from the bottom up (scroll down before), is it a Romanian "bird" (on the site it is labelled as being Bulgarian)?

Any ideas about when/where was the photo taken? Thank you!

http://lotniczapolska.pl/Latajacy-Holender-w-Polsce,32863

This post has been edited by Agarici on October 15, 2016 09:34 pm

[Dénes]

Yes, it is a Rumanian P.24E. By the tree-line the photo was probably taken at Salz airfield, in the Autumn of 1941.

Gen. Dénes

[Agarici]

Thank you, Denes!

Another thing occurred to me, while looking at some color profiles of the Romanian PZL P 24s from before the Axis markings. I saw a particular, less known pattern: two additional roundels on the fuselage, right behind the cabin, as in the post-23 August 1944 model, with markings in six positions: http://pfmrc.eu/index.php?/topic/41177-pzl...is-budowa-loty/

Apparently they were inspired by the older book "Romanian Aeronautical Constructions", in which the Michael Cross was allegedly substituted with the cocakrde (in the photo, by the authors), for the sake of ideological conformity (?). But in books (at least in the photos included in them) and movies from the same period (1970-1989) the M Cross did appear.

But I cannot ignore the similitude between this rare registration/marking model and those used by the Bulgarians (also pre-Axis) and especially by the Greeks. In the case of the later, there was a standard interwar pattern similar with the Romanian one - color bands on the tail and roundels on the wings, in four positions. But towards 1940 at least some of the 36 PZL P 24 (originally in silver/bare metal) were repainted in camouflage colors, with no tail color bands and with a fuselage blue-white-blue roundel.

I can even see a reason for the addition of a fuselage roundel in the case of the Romanian machines. Like in that of the Greek airplanes, the small (upper part of the direction only) tail tricolor marking would have made them difficult to identify by other planes flying at the same altitude (see the Romanian PZL, the photo in the link from my previous post, with the red -outer color - almost invisible)... What do you think about that?

A different, but related question: was there specific marking for the Romanian P 24, with blue-yellow-red color bands on the ends of the upper wings (see here: http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww15/f/36/213/0)? How widespread was it, and when was it used?

Thank you!

This post has been edited by Agarici on October 16, 2016 11:37 pm