WWII German armour camo - again!

[Gern]

I've been looking at some of the recent Panther builds on here. Some great work but I had a thought.

I understand that at some time, all German armour was painted yellow at the factory and sent out with quantities of brown and green paint to be applied in the field. If that's correct, would the soldiers in the field bother to remove tyres and tools etc before painting the camo colours? Tools maybe, but I can't see them going to all the trouble of removing tyres! So shouldn't there be paint on the tyres - either from brush painting or spray painting - as I can't see any need to be particularly careful when applying the paint.

Apologies for opening this can of worms but I'm curious. :smiling4:

[Jon Heptonstall]

I'd go along with that Dave.
Like to see photos of it though.If you look at modern British army vehicles you can clearly see where a repaint job has gone over the inner tyres.I've got a photo of a Warrior MCV painted OD over either desert or UN finish which is none too neat.
Jon.

[Jim F]

Hi Dave,
I would believe that Unit pride would be a factor in a disciplined Army so my belief would be that the camo would be painted as neatly as time permitted, Tanks weren't cheap and Units were expected to look after them as best they could and there are records of severe punishments being meted out when they weren't looked after appropriately.
Jim

[Wouter]

Hi Dave

Well, it depends, each Werkstatte had it's own way of applying the camouflage I reckon, but there were certainly maintenance crew who didn't bother removing tools and wheels to do that. There are famous photos of a Tiger II being camouflaged with an airbrush somewhere in France 1944. I think on this particular one the tools were removed prior to painting because they don't seem to have the camouflage on them. On the other hand it doesn't really makes sense since you are doing so much effort in camouflaging your vehicle and then letting things like the tools stand out.
[ATTACH]303163[/ATTACH]

This brings us to a second item btw: all too often I see people who have a problem with overspray when they freehand apply camouflage to their model. Or they get critique for the overspray. But I wouldn't bother with that too much, this actually happened in reality as well.

Cheers

[Guest]

HI , here's one image I have (for discussion ) and the tools seem not to have been painted, therefore I think it's as Wouter said , time and place etc.[ATTACH]303187[/ATTACH]

[Gern]

Hi Dave,
I would believe that Unit pride would be a factor in a disciplined Army so my belief would be that the camo would be painted as neatly as time permitted, Tanks weren't cheap and Units were expected to look after them as best they could and there are records of severe punishments being meted out when they weren't looked after appropriately.
Jim

Good point Jim. Some care taken then, but minor overspray or brush marks should be OK.

Thanks guys.

[Guest]

It would make a big difference whether the vehicle was sprayed before the Allied invasion or after it. Before, units would have all the time they needed to do things neatly and by the book; after, the emphasis would have been on getting the tank into the field, so my guess is that anything that didn’t affect fighting ability wasn’t overly important. That is, they wouldn’t have wanted paint on the periscopes, but on tools — who cares?

As for critique on overspray on a model, I’d say it depends on the degree. If your overspray is two centimetres wide on a 1/35 scale model, you can’t really claim it to be in scale, nor probably that it’s simply a result of your airbrush not being able to spray finer lines (unless you used a spray gun or spraying can, anyway). You could even make a case for brush-painting certain camouflage that was (or is) sprayed in the real world, as the overspray on the real thing is small enough that it approximates a solid line in 1/35, let alone smaller scales. NATO three-colour camouflage comes to mind, where the allowed overspray, off the top of my head, is about a centimetre, or some 0.3 mm in 1/35.

[Gern]

NATO three-colour camouflage comes to mind, where the allowed overspray, off the top of my head, is about a centimetre, or some 0.3 mm in 1/35.

I've never used a spray gun so I don't know anything about spray patterns. Can they really spray that accurately? That doesn't give you a lot of leeway when painting a kit and practically makes masking mandatory - especially if your hand shakes like mine.

[Guest]

IIRC, most of it’s sprayed using templates, so the overspray comes from the edges of those lifting up a little. As for the actual overspray allowed:

28. OUTLINING THE CAMOUFLAGE PATTERN ON THE VEHICLE
(…)
h. Inspections will only be measured at reference points and will evaluate the overall effect at 50 feet. In addition, overspray which can be discerned at 50 feet will be considered sloppy painting and will be corrected.

This is the guideline for soldiers painting the vehicle at a military installation; like I said, AFAIK manufacturers usually use templates placed over the vehicle to mask the areas that shouldn’t be painted.

[Gern]

Oh well. Masking it is then!

That only applies to the issue of overspray right? What sort of overlap is acceptable for 'soft edge' camo on armour? It's about time I learned to use my A/B for something other than just covering large areas of plastic so some idea of what I'm aiming for would be useful.

[Guest]

Note that the quote I posted above applies to American vehicles in NATO three-colour (green-brown-black) camouflage. On WWII German tanks in the middle of the war, AFAIK camouflage was usually sprayed freehand by the crews themselves, whose skill level could be anything from professional painter to never having held a spray gun before.

In other words: the “allowed” overspray depends on time and place, not to mention your own tastes — given that it’s your model. For WWII German, I’d aim for fairly fine but not necessarily as tight as 1990s American vehicles. Just experiment a little first, for example on an old model, to see how fine you can spray, what you’re comfortable with, and what looks right to you.

[TIM FORSTER]

I think it's worth bearing in mind that we are usually looking at black and white photos from the period - or over-exposed colour like the one above.

Whilst the camouflage is usually visible on the large flat surfaces it's not always so apparent on the details.

On the image of the Tiger II above it certainly looks as if the camouflage has been sprayed over the gun cleaning rods whereas on the shovel it doesn't - and yet the spade is definitely still in place...

[Guest]

On the image of the Tiger II above it certainly looks as if the camouflage has been sprayed over the gun cleaning rods whereas on the shovel it doesn't - and yet the spade is definitely still in place...

And the tow cable. The shovel looks like it has some dark yellow on it, so it was probably sprayed along as well. Looking closely at the photo, it looks like the only things they did before spraying as remove the periscopes from their mountings and cover the bow machine gun’s barrel (why they didn’t just pull that out of its mounting, we’ll never know, I suppose).

Probably the most extreme example of this style of painting is British vehicles for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The painters tried to avoid the windows, mostly, but pretty much anything else on a vehicle would get a coat of sand-coloured paint.

[Gern]

I can understand removing or covering periscopes and guns, but I guess I can pretty much choose what to do about the tools. I'll do my best and let you guys judge.

[Guest]

The good thing about German tanks like this is that you can’t really get it wrong, if you ask me. Patterns were painted on by the troops, so there’s a huge variation in appearance and application. If you paint a vehicle in NATO three-colour pattern with just some random red-brown and black blotches then it’s pretty much guaranteed to look wrong, but you don’t have that problem with ca. 1943–’44 German equipment as long as you get the colours reasonably correct.