"Canadian ww2 infantry uniform color" Topic

I\m about to paint up my first unit but I realize I'm not that confident about what color to use. The only source I have is the Osprey Canadian Army at War which shows it to be a dark brownish tone. Certainly darker than rhe British combat troops N.european theatre. Any links out there that might be helpful? Thanks.

Canadian battledress was a very slightly more green tone than British battledress, though not drastically so. Note however, that Canadians could on occasion receive BD from British supplies and the 1st Canadian Para Battalion received its uniforms from British sources as a matter of course, as it was in a British division.

However, Jean Bouchery's book 'The Canadian Soldier' muddied the waters somewhat, as its photographs show the BD to be almost lurid green. This caused much discussion at the time, but it was quickly established that the colour reproduction was highly inaccurate and that the fault for that lay with the printers.

Nevertheless, lurid green Canadian wargames armies now abound… much as electric blue French Napoleonic Legere have for many years, thanks to Osprey… ;o)

I agree with R Mark Davies. I just finished painting a 10mm Canadian infantry company for IABSM. Everything I read said the uniforms had a slightly greener tint as compared to their British counterparts. The best I found was the cheap "olive green" by delta coat (or is is ceramicoat?) The ones you get at the big box hobby stores like Hobby Lobby or Michaels. I basecoat the figures in black and when I first apply the olive green it looks too green but it dries to a brownish/green due to the black undercoat. It probably only works on 10mm troops because if applied on larger figures the green would dominate.

I found the British Uniform color from FOW/Vallejo to be too brown for a Canadian uniform.

Try this link. However as usual dye lots can be inconsistant.

link

I used Vallejo "Russian Green" on my 6mm troops, maybe a touch too green but I wanted them to look different to my British figures.

My ww2 Canadian battle dress is a greyed olive ,remarkably smilar to a feldmutze i possess.wrgmr1, spot on!

According to an article on the Flames of War page, a Canadian Battle Dress colour can be made from a 50:50 mix of Vallejo English Uniform and Brown Violet.

link

Or this site. Scroll near the end for WW2.

link

There are some good articles on Canadian uniforms here:
link

EDIT – haha, I should type faster!

I make mine by mixing Americana acrylic "Light cinnamon" and "Lt. Avocado" 50:50. Drybrushed over a burnt umber base coat it looks a lot like the battledress I wore as a young cadet.

Webbing color I don't go for the lurid yellow. I use the Vallejo stone grey. My recollections of seeing stacks of this stuff in QM stores is it came in all shades from washed out, light grey almost white, through various khaki tans and olive drab to dark green.

Hey All,

I find that the English Uniform/Brown Violet looks more like an unissued BD and is a bit too green and dark for a base color especially for smaller scales

My research has the Canadian battledress in Vallejo…

50/50 mix
Base: Khaki Grey 880 + Yellow Green 881 plus a very small touch of black
Shadow: Khaki Grey 880 + Yellow Green 881 plus more black.
Highlight: Khaki Grey 880 + Yellow Green 881 plus a small touch of white.

This is a pretty good match for color wartime color photos and actual items.

Note: Wait until dry. It will go from tan to green-brown.

Cheers!

Troy

One of the d day museums has canadian battledress on display at the door and it was markedly greener than the British BD. Like home guard colouring.

I have two TOS's; one British made, and one Canadian made. The colour difference is fairly negligible.

Really, it is just a slightly different shade of khaki. Mix a bit of green in with "English Uniform" and it will be close enough.

I'm not sure about the colour differences being "fairly negligible" or "slightly different." The differences seen to have been apparent at the time.

In his "Corps Commander" Sir Brian Horrocks relates the deception measures for Operation "VERITABLE" the offensive into the Reichswald in February 1945 where XXX Corps would attack through the front held by 2nd Canadian division. Horrocks believed that "time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted" and wanted "literally thousands of officers and N.C.O.s" to be able to study the ground before they attacked, but he was afraid that the Germans "would suddenly have seen these same hills covered by figures wearing a different coloured khaki battledress (the Canadian battledress was darker than ours)…" To prevent the Germans from getting a warning of the impending attack by noting all the new arrivals in different coloured uniforms XXX Corps implemented a strict pass system, only allowing a few observers in each observation post at a time for a specified period, and "…[t]hey were then fitted out in a suit of the darker Canadian battledress." (pp.156-157.)

Perhaps XXX Corps were just being extra careful but if they thought that the enemy, a fair distance away, would be able to tell the difference between the two colours, then it should probably be apparent on the wargames table too.

Cheers,
Bertie

Horrocks believed that "time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted"

Good advice indeed, but it was Rommel, not Horrocks, who said it.

Chris,
Probably older than both.
Horrocks didn't claim the phrase for himself, he put it inside quotation marks and prefixed it with: "There is an old Army saying…"
Of course, by capitalising "Army" Horrocks, perhaps unconsciously, made it clear which army's old saying he thought it was!)
Cheers,
Bertie