German WWII Airfield Grass Pavers "RASENSTEINE"

INTRODUCTION

How to describe this... hmm. German Concrete Marsden Matting maybe. That would not be too far off in regards to it´s functionality. EXCEPT for the fact that I could not find any evidence for these pavers being used for any high speed traffic such as on take off and/or landing which was a feature with Marsden Matting. Design wise, a totally different approach anyway. ok, so what are we looking at?

We are talking about a perforated concrete paver for being used in taxi and parking areas. We have evidence for it being used in Denmark and we have evidence (?) for it being used at what I believe to be Lagerlechfeld (Lechfeld) airbase. Lechfeld served partially as a test airfield for advanced Messerschmitt products, such as the Me-163 (Hanna Reitsch) and of course the Me-262. I will expand on this further down below in the chapter MESSERSCHMITT IN LECHFELD

The pavers were 80x80cm in real life. Seven holes were cast in it to assure water could drain and to prevent it from shifting. To my knowledge they were not physically connected to each other.

Apparently they were laid out on compacted ground, covered with earth and again compacted. Excess gravel was removed and after that, funktionality was assured.

In Danmark the Pavers had a specific name: Clausensten, named after a Danish contractor (Clausen) producing the pavers "on site" in Danmark. That´s one of the benefits of this simple system, btw: You can cast these items pretty much everywhere in a relatively short time. I would definitley recommend to have a look on the website www.felthangar.beretning.dk. They went pretty deep into the topic.

MESSERSCHMITT IN LECHFELD

(Please be advised: I´m not a historian. I´m merely putting together a conclusion resulting from the fragmented information available) The field was used for high performance aircraft testing because the factory airfield in Augsburg -Haunstetten was merely a grass field and together with it´s factory buildings a frequent target for air raids. The days of Haunstetten might have been counted anyway because the city started to expand around Haunstetten already, whereas at the same time the jet age popped around the corner, requiring more lengthy runway for operations.

The image above is one of five (perhaps more) of the most iconic (colorized) images of a 262. The austrian painter plus some staffers wanted to turn a fighter into a light bomber so we see some SC-250s (?) arranged in front of a 262 equipped with "Wikingerschiff" bomb racks in what I believe to be Lechfeld airfied. The aircraft in question might be Me 262 V-7 Werk-Nr. 170303 which would bring us to some Erprobungskommandos and thus to Lechfeld. I have no primary source for this claim. However, I have more than one independent source, so I´ll go with it.

Upon closer inspection of the images provided in here, you might notice that the pavers are not perfectly aligned all the time. Which brings us to a very important feature:

PRODUCT FEATURES AND APPLICATION

The THIJMEN FEATURE is a feature representing both, spacers as well as pre-determined breaking/cutting points during the application of the Rasensteine WWII Luftwaffe airfield pavers. Since we would be using acrylic texture paste, the paste would need to get caught somewhere, visually separating the pavers from one another, whilst keeping them together for convinient application "en bloque". This feature has been brought to reality by the Dutch modeler Thijmen Broer, hence the name Thijmen Feature.

A "bloque" of Rasensteine, ready for being laid out and painted

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

• - Prime the units/blocks (or separated pavers) using a spray can. Use WHITE automotive primer from the DUY shop because you goinna burn through quite some primer with most of it going through the holes. That or you might start with the next step and prime directly on the base. Which would go like this:

• - Arrange your layout. Fix units and/or separate pavers according to plan. Use superglue fixing your layout to an appropriate base. When combining with a different surface texture, be sure the upper surfaces of the pavers line up with the height of the adjacent type of ground texture. (Grass, concrete).

• - Make sure you capture the visual characteristics: Pavers always brighter than earth/gravel. 

• - Apply bright gray acrylic paint. Consider filters.

• - Use the speckling technique (toothbrush, illustrated below) in order to apply more visual texture. Use diluted oil paint. Colors being recommended for speckling: Black, White, Brown, Beige. Seal with Flat Clear Varnish.

• -!ALWAYS MAKE SURE THE PAVERS BEING PAINTED BRIGHTER THAN THE EARTH THEY ARE BEING COMBINED WITH!

• -I did not find a single reference showing the opposite. So in order to capture the iconic look, please kindly proceed as advised.

Separated pavers might be trimmed in order to match your layout. Pavers fixed with CA and primed and painted in Light Grey.

Diluted oil paint in Black, White, Brown and Beige/Ochre being speckled over the layout

The speckling technique in effect, delivering a "grainy" visual texture