"US camo question" Topic

Hi all,

Can anyone tell me the year/s that the US forces changed vehicle camo from plain olive drab to MERDC/NATO 3 colour camo.
I have tried google but it has lots on MERDC but little on when it changed. I want to do a 1976 scenario.

1975, so your 76 scenario should have 4 colour patterns or MERDC

link

MERDC was four colors if I am correct…

The Brown color, the green color, the black and the "buff" color…

Yup, either called MERDC or four colour pattern, three colour pattern came later.

Yes and Yes …

The four colors varied by where the vehicle was deployed. There were about 8 different possible color schemes.

There were still quite a few vehicles running around in just the old OD scheme (mostly trucks) all through the 70's, so this probably the most colorful time for the US.

That's right. MERDC was a pattern; units would use it to apply a "paint by numbers" camouflage scheme to match the local terrain.

For example, here are three USMC AAVP-7A1s. (The one on the left was mine.) Look at the bow, you can see that they all use roughly the same pattern with minor variations, but with different colors.

From left to right:

"Jungle:" Camp Schwab, Okinawa. Mostly greens.
"Desert:" 29 Palms. Sand and browns.
"Temperate:" Camp Pendleton. Green and brown.

There was also an "Arctic" with white and green.

The pattern would be drawn with chalk on the vehicle based on the FM. However, with the intro of CARC. The vehicles would have to be spray painted by an upper level of support maintenance on main post. In a completely sealed large structure. With the painters wearing sealed chem protection suits, masks, etc. … The CARC paint was very toxic while being sprayed.

If I remember correctly, the CARC paint was applied in a completely different pattern and almost always used NATO 3-color – that is, black, green, and brown.

We saw the change from MERDC to CARC in 1989/1990, just before the Gulf War. Vehicles would be returned from a rebuild with the new CARC paint.

There was also an "Arctic" with white and green.

There are actually two different snowy winter patterns: One was "Snow – Temperate w/ Trees&Shrubs" which replaced the Light Green with white; and the other was "Snow – Temperate w/ open terrain" which replaced the Field Green with white. The "Winter US&Europe – verdant" pattern doesn't have white at all (it's field green, field drab, sand, and black), and the "Winter Arctic pattern" is pure white over everything. (Yes, I do have a pdf copy of Army TB 43-0147, why do you ask?)

I could have sworn I'd seen an 'arctic' MERDC pattern where the black patches were painted gray, but that may have merely been a too-thin application of white.

For winter camo in the ROK, we'd just white wash the whole vehicle or just the brown and black, on the camo pattern, IIRC …

Thanks guys,

So it looks like 1976 would have the boys in MERDC. Now which one to go with. As I'm doing European North German Plain I guess brown/black/green/tan is the way to go.

Trouble is I wonder what the vehicles looked like when in theatre. The models I'm using are H&R 1/300th and I'm worried that I'm going to make them look like abominations.It looks like MERDC could be tricky to pull off at that scale.

Check out the GHQ site – ghqmodels.com/store/n3.html

This previous post on TMP might help

TMP link

There are actually two different snowy winter patterns: One was "Snow – Temperate w/ Trees&Shrubs" which replaced the Light Green with white; and the other was "Snow – Temperate w/ open terrain" which replaced the Field Green with white.

Interesting, I did not know that.

I was USMC, and UDPed (that is, went back and forth) from 1st MarDiv in California to 3rd MarDiv in Okinawa. We never went anywhere with snow; that was left to 2nd MarDiv out of Camp Lejeune, which would occasionally send units to Norway. I saw photos of their vehicles painted with white camouflage, but never worked on one personally.

Go with Summer US&Europe Verdant:

Although it was changed seasonally

Some units in the mid/late 70s also trialled DUAL-TEX 'digital' camouflage and the truly nauseating MASSTER scheme. A lot of the new kit coming in during the mid 80s, such as Abrams and Bradley, was also fielded in plain OD for a time, as they fell into the gap between the obsolescence of MERDC and the introduction of NATO 3-Colour.

As the change over occurred, I've seen various patterns on different units for a short time … MERDC, NATO 3 Color, etc., …

Yes, I've got photos of vehicles still in MASSTER during the mid-1980s, as well as vehicles in MERDC during the Gulf War.

A useful link – link

Thanks again guys. I like the summer variant the best, not sure why, but I go for greens over browns generally. Thanks for the links to actual 300th scale stuff painted up. I will give it a go.