"Why Are German Tanks Yellow?" Topic

Hmm?

If you drive through Eastern Europe in summer, the grasslands are all yellow.

Because "dunkelgelb" is fun to say!

In order to hide among the daffodils.

Allen

I think because its a good neutral color. I imagine because it is a light color, it worked well as a base for the red and green colors that were issued to troops in the field to do custom camoflage with. You could thin those and apply them in light steaks, with some yello showing through if you wanted an overall light-colored look, or apply them thickly to darken the vehicle.

It can also become quite handy when on a touristic trip to North Africa with your tank and the crew. Those British chavs can get quite wild when they get out into the southern sun, taking pot shots with their 2 pounder and playing bagpipes all night long.

The yellow colour does not help against the bagpipes though – you just got to learn to enjoy them.

Griefbringer

Why Are German Tanks Yellow?

Because the British had already bagsied pink for the LRDG and the SAS.

Easier to hide in the grass than if your tank is painted dark grey

Plus, lets Tamiya sell lots of Desert Sand

In regards to the Tamiya note, German tanks came off the production line in dark yellow and not Desert Sand. I spilled a half gallon of it in my basement as I was trying to use a spray paint system!

Except when they don't come off the line in Dark yellow, but rather Dark Green or Primer brown…

Damon.

"Fetch my yellow trousers, Schmidt."

Tamiya also has a Dark Yellow, by the way.

OK, the facts are in, the Wehrmacht got thier tanks on the cheap from Kurt Russel and that yellow color is a special anti-rust compound, honest!

Used taxis my butt.

but Tamiya have withdrawn all their paints now in the uk….they will have to be just primer grey from now on…or BLACK!!??? Kewwwwl!!

And the winner is: Ivan DBA

Both Mick and Ivan seem to put forward good ideas.

Dried grasses tends to be a yellowish colour.

The steppes are very grassy.

Its better to paint dark over light than light over dark.

Hence the 'dark yellow' with the darker colours painted over in the field.

I suspect that was the logic behind the choice, but I doubt we will ever be sure.

I also heard something about it being a good contrast with the other colours in black and white photos (combined with the reddish brown and the dark green it breaks up the shape) making it harder to pick them out by photo reconnaissance. If that's an old wives tale I've bought, let me know.

When I was on exercise, our vehicles would become very dusty and the colour was very similar to the dark yellow. In fact, we found it so effective, we often used mops to "paint" our vehicles with mud – when it dried, it was dark yellow. It seems to blend in with the grass and steppes (prairie in our case) as well as other training areas very well. Green anks are actually fairl easy to pick out on a day with the sun at your back.
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Tim

Good point about the Tamiya colours – we can still get them in Canada, although I usually use a blend of GW Desert Yellow and Graveyard Earth

In 1945 OKH decided to use dark grey as the factory base with red brown and dark olive, but I am not sure that they had the chance to put the new scheme into place before the war ended

I've read that camouflage was more to fool enemy planes than ground forces. Don't know if it's true.

I thoughtr it was Eva Braun favourite colour.

Adolf "This on has got a 88mm gun"
Eva "But this one is a nice colour"
Adolf "OK, OK, we will have 1,000 Tigers, but in the yellow"
Eva "Thank you, dearest"

Its also relatively cheap to make – yellow/ochre is a natural mineral colour – like – "why are old time box cars red/brown?" – because that is the cheapest colour in bulk.

Because Hitler was crazy.

I have been reliably informed that it was for two reasons, the first being the problem of fighting a war on two fronts. They could have supplied tanks to the east in more of a brown colour but that would have meant working out what was going where at the factory or re-spraying upon allocation. Neither was a good use of meagre resources. The other was flexibility, it is possible to make a yellow tank green and brown with petrol based stains (pigment powder/petrol mix). It is not so easy to make a dark tank a lighter desert yellow colour as you will have seen with russian winter camouflage, it comes off eventually.

I thoughtr it was Eva Braun favourite colour.

I thought Eva's favourite colour was brown, while Adolf's favourite colour was violent.

Griefbringer

Panzer grey was used so that when vehicles were stationary and correctly parked in the shadows of buildings/woods they were hard to spot from the air. The same reason that the upper surfaces of Brtish vehicles were painted black. Camouflage is irrelevant on moving vehicles.

Dunkelgelb was introduced as the steppes lacked handy buildings/woods to park next to and were predominantly a dull tan colour in summer.

Camo is NOT irrelevant on moving vehicles.

The US Army has an entire manual of the principles of camo. They manual clearly states several areas where camo is beneficial.

On moving vehicles camo makes it harder to accuarately determine the speed at which the vehicle is moving which is a key part of the unit 'Spot Report'. In regards to ground units camo makes it harder to accuarately sight a moving vehicle.

At distance, most/all/some colors/camo fade to grey then black. That's part of the reason the USN and USAF went with the low viz grey scheme at one point. Color just isn't all that important in most/any/some respects, even pink can work.

Scientifically/operationally argueable, so argue away.

Hi sun Flower Fields was the reason.

M

As Martin Rapier suggested, when the tank is stationary, its more at risk, so if you can't move out of the way, try and not be a target in the first place. best way to archive this, don't get seen in the first place.

'Cause the DAK looked so good they decided to paint it on everything, but they ran out of desert yellow and found a huge amount of dunkelgelb in the back of the shop. 8^D

Speer got a real bargain on Dunkelgelb pigment when he shorted Wiesbadenpigmentgeschicten GmBH stock in 1942 and ended up owning the company. Being a paragon of correct business dealings, he only quintupled his money when he sold to OKW the next month. He cut Guderian in on the deal. Goering was upset that he couldn't use it on the Me-262, but Speer gave him a Renoir and a Rembrandt, so Goering went away happy. For now.

green is a very easy color for the human eye to pick out.
our eyes can pick out more shades of green than any other color.

Jim

One of the first notices about planned Citadel operation came to Russians when partisans had informed an agent in Lviv that they saw several trains with bright yellow tanks moving to front. At least in Soviet times our historians thought that these were the tanks, suppposed to be sent to Rommel (and in one book I've seen that they were actually withdrawn from N.Africa), but ended in Kursk.
Not sure if it is really true, though.

Camo is NOT irrelevant on moving vehicles.

I agree with rudy's post.

The other thing that people are missing is camouflage is supposed to help break up the outline of a vehicle which makes it harder to put your sight graticule on a distant target. It's a major reason for using vegetation on a vehicle as well.
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Tim

Most sighting systems used a version of the modern sighting system on M551 Sheridans and LAWS. You have to place the vehicle on certain markings on the sight to get a range, etc.

As Tim points out, this is harder to do on a vehicle in Camo than one which is solidly painted.

What else would you expect, all tigers are brownish yellow. :-)

What it all boils down to is: German tanks were yellow because someone painted them yellow!

Can we discuss why Belgian tanks were brown now. British tanks were too, for a while anyway.

the term 'yellow' is a bit misleading.

Dunkelgelb was a drab earth color, a lighter Field Drab. It's in the same portion of the color spectrum as the Field & Olive Drabs

Same reason snow is?

Because like Bananas, they hung around in bunches.(Hee! Hee!)

Paul