US Sherman Firefly

[Bortig the Viking]

Hi all, can anyone tell me the green color used on the Sherman Firefly, want it to be a Vallejo Model Air. All I can find is dark green and light green etc, will save me time if anyone can help.

[Guest]

American tanks were painted olive drab, which is a green-brown colour that fades to brown, not to green. Thus, US Army tanks were rarely, if ever, green. Anything that says it’s US Army OD will be about the right shade; USAAF or USAF OD might be a bit off (usually too light) for a tank, but on the other hand, this might just compensate for the scale effect (that is, that you “need” to use a lighter shade the smaller the model is).

However, with “Sherman Firefly” you probably mean a Sherman with 17-pounder gun, right? Those existed, but you can’t use a kit of a British one to make an accurate model, and they were never used in combat.

In that case you’ve got basically two choices: one is SCC 15 (Standard Camouflage Colour No. 15, these had no actual name as such) which is the British version of OD but which does fade to green instead of to brown. When new the two colours were almost identical (not quite, though). The other option, certainly for an early tank, would be SCC 2, which is a medium shade of chocolate brown. This was superseded in 1944 by SCC 15, but vehicles were only to be repainted when the old paint was in bad enough condition to make this necessary, not just to get them in the new colour.

[slupanter]

Hi Bortig

Worth a read

http://www.theshermantank.com/tag/american-firefly/

I think the Model Air colour is 71043 but John sell the Mig Ammo US Sherman paint set.

[PaulTRose]

and they were never used in combat.

you must be jesting???..........they made a couple of thousand of them, cos they could take out the Tiger and Panther

[Windy]

Do you mean a standard Sherman Firefly as used by 21st Army Group in NW Europe, or one of the 200 experimental 17pdr armed vehicles built for the US Army? If it's the former they would mostly have been painted SCC 15, if you mean the latter then US olive drab.

[Guest]

Worth a read

http://www.theshermantank.com/tag/american-firefly/

I linked to that same article in my reply too

you must be jesting???..........they made a couple of thousand of them, cos they could take out the Tiger and Panther

I phrased myself a little awkwardly. I was referring to the ones built for the Americans there, not the British versions that were widely used.

[Bortig the Viking]

Thanks for the replies, am thinking of doing the Sherman now and not the firefly version, think I prefer the look, olive drab it will be.