"Blanco Belts and B........ for WWII Brits" Topic

This topic has been raised here before, but this time I am rather hoping that, with contributions from people who know what they are talking about, we can cover it to the depth needed by any wargamer seeking to paint his toys the "right" colour.

What I will do is lay my modest pool of knowledge on the table and then encourage those who know better to add to it and correct it. Hopefully when the dust settles, we will have the TMP blanco manual for wargamers.

First some links:
link Surprisingly good for a wiki article, although no real comment about what colours might have been used where;

link Interesting background, but still not that helpful about what colour where and when.

blancoandbull.com Should be THE ULTIMATE website, gives some clues but not much.

link A fourum for 1/6th scale modellers, not a bad summary of blanco, but it still doesnt answer the big question – these guys do a great job of making their toys look like the original – good for painting guides.

link a re enactor forum with some clear (if unsupported ideas which gel with my own predjudice a bit.

link Sumary of the salient bits from Blanco and Bull – good primer.

link Requirements for 60th anniversary Gold Beach reenactors – no mucking about here – No 3 dark green ONLY.

The best book on British Uniforms is Brayley & Ingrams : " The British Tommy in WW2 ", it is singularly unhelpful on the matter of Blanco; their webbing book is even less so.

Next Post, I'll give you what I know.

This is about what I know.

Blanco was a waxy substance with the consistency of hard boot polish, it was water soluble and was applied to cleaned webbing with a brush, then excess was brushed off.

It seems to have had three purposes:
1. It obscured stains;
2. It gave a unit a single webbing colour where the underlying fabric may have been quite variable;
3. It could provide better concealment (eg KG3 in NW Europe) than the original or faded webbing colour.

It wasn't used in the far east or in Egypt.

It came in a variety of colours, but the three most common seem to be:

KG No 3 – Khaki Green No 3 – an almost pea green with a touch of brown, tonally about the same shade as battledress serge. This was extensively (?could be exclusively) used in NWE 44-45.

Khaki Green Light 103 – a pale khaki – sort of gosling green with a touch of brown. This should show up like the proverbial in B&W photos. I have the impression that the BEF and Norway forces used this and that it may have been "standard" for home forces until early 1944 when KG3 came in. Presumably this was because the pale webbing provided a great highlight to sight your rifle on.

Khaki 61 – a slightly orange version of khaki drill – some photos of home forces show what might be this colour.

Now, what I cant figure out:

Was there a theatre specific colour, or was it a batallion thing?
What did they use in Tunisia and Italy?
Are my predjudices about Light Khaki and KG3 correct?

i) I believe it was up to the battalion CO, however the prevalence of KG3 in NWE does indicate some sort of theatre wide directive. Or maybe that was all that was issued to them:)

ii) In the main I thought the same as the desert – unblancoed, possibly scrubbed (or bleached out at any rate).

iii) Pale webbing looks smart, which is why all my toy soldiers march around in unblancoed webbing. With my real stuff I have two sets, one unblancoed and the other KG3.

Martin – many thanks

Your point iii makes sense, which is probably why 103 was popular in 1940.

There is a movie with David Niven acting as a platoon commander – I think it is called the "Way ahead", the final scene is a tommy advancing through smoke etc and you can see what a superb sighting aid two vertical stripes accross the torso would have been – so I can see why KG3 was perhaps the only stuff issued in '44.

I'm not sure the khaki shade of their webbing actually makes much difference – troops who are stationary are very hard to locate and shoot, troops who are moving (especially if it is non tactical movement) are very easy to see. Unblancoed webbing is still a dull khaki unless it bleached out for some reason (which it might well have been in 'The Way Ahead').

The darker green does blend in a bit better and is a similar shade to the dyed green of e.g. '58 pattern but even in the 50s you can see soldiers in a very light shade of 37 pattern webbing so the use of KG3 wasn't universal even then.

If you have a look at the rather motely collection of Brits on the right, you'll see what I mean.

The MPs white webbing does stand out rather:)

As does the red cap.

"He's a peeler, 716. Come to arrest the Jerries."

cheers

Martin

That is a rather nifty pic – I see you were up against Herman's Germans. Is the drill shirt and serge trousers just a desert thing, or were the shirts all drill under the serge blouse?

The drill shirts were dependant on what theatre you were in. At the start of the war the wool greyback shirt was still regulation.

Speaking of regulations, '37 pattern webbing was NOT supposed to be blancoed, merely washed. The brass was not supposed to be polished. Yeah, like that was going to happen in any British regiment with an RSM!

Some units even painted their webbing black.

Spontoon

I have heard of rifle regts in the UK painting their webbing black, do you know if they went to Normandy with black webbing?

As a collector of WW1 P08 webbing my feeling is that blanco was applied after the fact to "refurbish" worn out gear – possibly much later. The fact that so many pieces survive in peculiar colors of refinish does not mean that they were used that way – only that they ended up that way.

Another good reference is:

karkeeweb.com

According to a lot of the old chaps I've interviewed, the usual order in the field was 'scrubbed' – i.e. sans Blanco. Blanco was just another embuggrance they could do without, as well as an extra thing to carry, so it was ditched or relegated to the large pack that stayed with battalion Echelon and only brought out for parades or GOC's inspections.

However, one of the Canadian Rifle regiments definitely had webbing blanco'd black while in Normandy. I heard this straight from the horse's mouth from an old boy in Normandy and I've seen it written in a regimental history, but can't remember which (I've read histories for the Queen's Own Rifles, Regina Rifles and Royal Winnipeg Rifles, so it's one or all of those).

I don't know if British Rifle regiments wore black webbing in the field, but I would expect them to have done so when on parade, as black belts were one of the distinctive features of the Rifles tradition.

In the Far East, it was quite common to paint webbing with vehicle paint – either black or green as a damp-proofing and camouflage measure. They were also issued with locally-produced Jungle Green webbing from 1943 onwards. Nevertheless, a lot of webbing in photos does appear very pale, so was probably left natural.

Hah!

So, blanco doesnt really matter for wargamers then? A faded natural khaki looks right.

Interested in Rifle regts, it would make my armoured inf stand out to have them in black webbing.

Mark

I used to wear the Australian version of that jungle green for 42 days straight in Papua New Guinea – it would go a pale sage green colour by about day 21.

Webbing seems to be one of those things that fades really easily – like denim – but looks really dark when wet. It's difficult for a modeller to get a good match, so I learned a long time ago not to worry! ;o)

British '44 Pattern webbing was also dyed Jungle Green at source and had black anodised fittings, so absolutely no Blanco or Brasso required. Needless to say, the post-War peacetime British Army couldn't have that, so largely reverted back to '38 Pattern, with plenty of Blanco, Brasso, Bull and Bags o's!

Yes – pioneers khaki and a hundred years later is still using brass – a strange institution really.

S is bleeped?!

Even Hillary S?

How about el rotary engine?

No onanism on the historical boards please

Since when? ;o)

Onan the barber belongs on the fantasy boards

I paint my figures with mismatched sets of webbing. I'm sure that few soldiers got complete new sets all at once. So mine often have one universal pouch quite yellow, and one more greyish tan.