"US ARMY EUROPE UNIQUE 1970's CAMOUFLAGE" Topic

I recently found sound pictures and posts on another site regarding a camo scheme used by the US Army in Europe during the 1970's. It seems to have been unique to USAREUR but not universally adopted.

It's a sand based scheme with a very light sand, reddish brown, green and black.

It predates the introduction of MERDC.

Some photo's show it quite well – though some show other vehicles still in the old Dark OD.

I'd like to use it on some 1/300 or 1/285 armour but I'm trying to find a match for the sand colour.

Anyone any ideas ? – I prefer to use Tamiya or Vallejo acrylics.

Do you have any photo links to this? This sounds interesting…

Try here – it's an old post but interesting

link – 43k

in the 70's US army used a four color system. It was always officially a four color scheme in 40/40/10/10 perportions. There were about a dozen different combos. The most common was the temperate woodland of Dark Green, Field Drab, Sand and black. The 7th army used the variation your talking about. Keep in mind the paint jobs were maintained locally by the vehicle crews so the colors often staryed from doctrine.
An interesting side note. The Army was experimenting with infrared defeating paint in the mid 70's. Two of the colors looked like day glow yellow and green. I saw one of these at Ft Riley Kansas in 1977.

FABET01, there was another scheme the poster is referring to, a transitional scheme used when the Army started experimenting with camo in the early '70s.

Here's an Ebay auction illustrating it: auction

Really, the best sand color for it would be…US Sand from Testors. The same sand tone as used in the MERDC scheme.

Here's a website with Tamiya shades, if you want to still go that way: link Use FS 30277.

Damon.

Damon – many thanks for that. I'll have a look at what I can match to FS30277. Testors colours aren't easy to find over here (the UK).

On the message board I was looking at 30277 was mentioned but someone claimed it was wrong. If I can find something close I think I'll got for it.

Niall

Garand: Thanks. Oddly enogh I have that Squadron book buried somewhere. Hopefully not too far off subject , but have you ever seen the IR defeating paint scheme I mentioned. I've only ever seen it once and could never confirm the story I was given.

link

The weird-looking pale scheme was called MASSTER and was briefly seen in USAREUR during the 1970s.

Another bizarre one that was rather more widespread (in the early 1980s) was the 'Dual-Tex' scheme of black, brown and sand squares, superimposed onto a base coat of field drab and forest green – very reminiscent of modern USMC 'digital' uniforms.

Here's a tank in Dual-Tex:

link

Here are some vehicles (M577 command post and M60 tanks) in MASSTER, along with some in MERDC:

link

MASSTER was a brief experiment from 1972 until the introduction of MERDC in 1974.

Re Tamiya paints – I remember from my modelling days that the Tamiya M151 MUTT model actually included a painting guide for MASSTER, so maybe if you could find that painting guide, you could get the Tamiya paint colours?

outstanding!

There was also a dualtex uniform. I've been looking for one for ages. Someone testing them told me the workled pretty well, but the troops felt so silly int hem the idea was abandoned.