"French Version of NATO 3 color camo" Topic

I recently bought some Tamiya NATO three color paints (the green XF67 and brown XF68). I want to paint several Heller VAB's. However, the paints seem darker than the actual colors used by the French Army. See the photo below.

picture

Is there that much variance in the NATO three color scheme between the NATO nations? Also, what would be the best choice (Vallejo if possible) available to reproduce the French scheme?

The NATO black is OK as it's just a very dark gray, but the french green is brighter than NATO green and the french brown is more yellowish as opposed to the reddish NATO brown. Just substitute XF5 Green and XF52 Flat Earth for the NATO colours. That has worked very well for my French Army vehicles.

Cheers.

I own a vehicle in NATO three colour. The black is actually a very dark green. Say a "zillion" gallons of black to one of green, but definitely a greeney black.

French three colour is generally referred to as Central European pattern in MV circles.

The photo is really bright (sunny day). Look at this one, the colors are darker.

picture

Olivier

Working with a French field bath unit last year (yes, really), I made sure that I had a damn good look at the three-colour paint on their trucks. It is definitely a bright green – not remotely dark and nowhere near as dark as the typical British Military Green that I'm familiar with. In Humbrol terms, I would opt for Humbrol 80 Grass Green. The colours of that VAB in the link above are exactly what I have seen on French Army trucks with my own eyes.

I have to say that three-colour US kit always looks much darker than French or German kit: they use a very different and much darker shade of green than the French and Germans. While the 'NATO 3 Colour' scheme is a joint 'idea', in reality the different nations execute that idea in subtly different ways.

Here's a photo of one of the trucks (on a cloudy day – at Omaha Beach, as it happens): link

Here is a link to my 3 tone NATO paint scheme.

link

link

I've found that Vallejo Panzer Aces German Camouflage Brown and a mix of Golden Olive and Medium Olive make good matches for the bulk of the photos of French AFVs I've seen. Whetehr that's a property of the light in said photos I don't know but I doubt many people will be holding my 1/50 scale VABs up against teh real thing. The Vallejo German Camouflage brown is the colour of milk chocolate, it's actually a uniform colour but works very well.

I spray mine in Humbrol grass green and paint Tamiya Olive Drab and Flat Earth over it.