Gday Simon, with aircraft, I am a fan of adding the crew to their crew positions if the aircraft is going to be posed in flight...because 'looks a bit weird' otherwise. I am not much chop at painting small figures either but they are going to reasonably obscured in the cockpit and gun turrets and so no one will be able to look that closely at the crew anyway.😉 On painting, my take is that during the war, paint was made by more than one paint manufacturer and even though they all might all have had the same 'recipe' for a colour, there would/could be a few discrepancies of the shade because they might not have the right percentage amount of pigments or made errors in mixing for the colour. Also if painting was being done out in the field, what ever paint was on hand at the unit, 'near enough is good enough...just slap it on and push the aircraft out as serviceable...we don't have time to muck around.' That would apply to German aircraft, especially mid to late war when shortages kicked in. A lot of photos from that time are black and white, so interpretation of paint colour is subjective. Love ya work and looking forward to Part III on this kit. I am a bit of an Airfix fan. Cheers Regards Beertruk. 😉

It's no loss loosing the front gunner, he is not the same scale of the pilots, looks half size.