"Thoughts on painting Japanese tanks?" Topic

Green, brown, dark cream and dark brown irregular splodges, with a thin wobbly line of yellow paint goinge front to back and left to right, forming a cross at the top – somewhere…..

Any thoughts on how I can make that yellow (worst colour to paint with ever, in terms of coverage) look yellow on the mottled background? Weren't some tanks just plain green or plain brown – ish? What have you done? Happy to see pics of your pride and joy Jap vehicles

My belief would be that any tanks garrisoned on an island were pretty much there for the duration, (arrival to destruction), regardless of obsolescence or camo and so the colour scheme would have been unchanged since the original paint job, no matter what higher doctrines might have decided from time to time?

That said, wouldn't the crews have used whatever they might find locally (mud, local paint supply etc) to make the vehicles suit the surroundings (and seasons) better? Can't see mud daubings being ideal during the rain, though.

I went by my Osprey book on how they were painted, but this page has some great photos of a 1/35 model that is painted exactly as I did mine. Everything I can find seems to reflect that this was fairly common on the islands. link

AFAIK some of the tanks held in reserve for the Home Islands defence were left in the factory khaki scheme. A good match is Tamiya's Khaki.

Damon.

My Ha Go, Te Ke and Chi Ha sport the four colour scheme; I applied a dark base coat of each colour (using a very bright sand for the yellow base) and then worked that over with the lighter topcoat.

I'll try and get some piccies done soon.

Don't be so lazy, if you are going to paint them do it right. By the way I think mine are pretty good looking even if they were a pain in the a@# to paint.

Tom

AAgree entirely, Waterloo. Laziness rules – but the I've got plenty of them to paint up and I'd rather not keep repainting them until I get the correct 'look'.! Any pics of yours? Phil – I'd be pleased to see pics of your results.

The base factory colour for Japanese tanks was a dull light brown (not sand – there was no yellow hue) – known to the Allies as 'Japanese Artillery Brown'. However, some units operating in the pacific used a jungle green shade as the base colour.

Thoughts on painting Japanese Tanks? Don't bother. They just attract enemy fire!

I have a painting question. Would Tamiya J.A. Green be appropriate for a WW II Pacific Theater Japanese Tank? These are Weird World War II vehicles. Flat brown camo, with the yellow lines in a cross across the top in addition to the green are my ideas after a Google search. Thoughts?