"Consistency of paint schemes (11th Panzer, 1943)?" Topic

I've decided to start yet another side project: building the 11th Panzer Dvision for Kursk. Just starting but I'm wondering….

At what level would paint schemes have been consistent? I would guess a platoon certainly would get the same paint at the same time. But would all the companies look the same? Battalions? Or would the entire division have the same paint scheme (allowing for variations in shade of specific colors)? What about across unit types (i.e. armor vs. Panzer Grenadiers, versus support Stug IIIs?)

Debating whether I want more or less uniformity, just wondering what the division would have looked like in total.

I don't know specifically about 11th Panzer, but I do recall that camouflage was not yet applied at the factory in 1943. All new vehicles came off the assembly line painted dunklegelb and then the maintenance crews were to spray the vehicles when they arrived at the front. Each vehicle was in theory supposed to have it's own spray equipment, but as one anecdote stated something like, "The spray painting equipment was the second thing we threw away, after the gasmasks." Paint was sometimes applied by the crews with mops or brushes if no spray equipment was around.

Old vehicles were often still grey or could have been repainted dark yellow with or without camo, or sometimes the dark yellow was applied as camo over the dark grey. In 1943 the schemes varied much more than later.

I recommend the Panzer Colours series by Squadron for a good look at paint schemes each year.

For 43 a degree of non uniformity is probably a good idea, but I'd stick with similar proportions or styles within a unit (blobs, lines, soldiers and the general weight of tan, green and brown). They look a bit silly otherwise.

I recall an account of a company commander in 1944 who got chewed out by the battalion CO for painting all his tanks in a daft zebra stripe scheme. They did at least all have the same scheme.

As above, copying the patterns from books is easiest.

Just olive green patches/squiggles over dark yellow for your Kursk vehicles, Crispy.

probably depended on how important it was to the commanders at various levels. If the division CO didn't care, it was up to the regiment/battalion CO; if he didn't care he left it to the company COs; if they didn't care, the platoon leaders, etc.

Varying the schemes a bit would also help in recognition. With several companies on the board they do tend to intermingle sometimes.

I wanted to comment on this in a general way:
The Germans didn't reinforce divisions in the way we did in the west. They "used up" divisions. They would leave the division in combat until it was too small to be called a division, then they'd convert it organizationally to a regiment-sized "Kampfgruppe" (with the old division's number), reassigning the grunts to the remaining units and sending the command cadres from the dissolved units back to Germany to form new divisions. When the Kampfgruppe got too small they'd dissolve it and send the personnel off the same way. After a division was dissolved they'd assign new soldiers to the cadres back in Germany, re-equip the division, train it and send it back to the front, the old division's number and a few officers would be the only thing the same. Equipment was treated the same way, reassigned when reorganized. There were cases where divisions would be taken wholesale from one front and shipped to another but this wasn't common, and usually was panzer division (the SS PanzerKorps after Kursk comes to mind).
Repaired equipment was assigned based on need and the level of repair: division workshops would send equipment around the divisional level, army workshops could reassign to the army, factory rebuilds could go anywhere. Because equipment sent to higher level workshops was not guaranteed to be returned units on the front tended to try to keep the repairs on the lowest level possible.
So, to address the 11th panzer specifically you need to ascertain whether the 11th panzer you're painting was fresh from the rebuild process, in which case I'd expect the panzers to be uniform both in models and paint scheme (for 43 that'd be dunkelgelb with spraypainted stripes in brown and/or green), or a division on the front for some time, in which case you'd expect the tanks to be a mixed lot both in type and paint scheme. You asked about trucks also, the same applies: Fresh divisions would have more of the same types of light and heavy trucks, seasoned divisions would be more catch-as-catch can.
Now hopefully someone who really knows what they're talking about will intervene.

…and of course all my paragraphs disappear into the ether.

I seem to recall that tank colors were the same at Company level, when I was looking at one of the SS Divisions.

As for the 11th I found the following schemes:
Co. 6 – a few pics down.
link

Co. 1 – 6 pics down.
link

Co. 4
link

Best way is to find all the photos and schemes you can and see if there is any consistency.