"How carefully was camouflage applied?" Topic

One of my favorite tankie photos in the Flames of War Desert Rats book, from the 1st edition.
It shows a Grant tank, with very streaky camo applied. Some patches are thin, and you can see a lot of spots where the paint ran. If I submitted a 1/35 model of this at a convention, I would be kicked out with my fingers broken, so I could never paint again.

I see models with carefully airbrushed camo, guarded by masks and stencils, etc.

See my title above. Just how carefully was camo paint applied, particularly in the field?

I'm finishing up some 15mm Cruiser tanks with Caunter. Thus my curiosity.

Depends. Was it applied by the crew, by the maintenance section or by the manufacturer? German armor FREX had all three, depending on the time period. If it was applied by the manufacturer (most German camo post fall '44) then they would use templates/mats to apply the schemes. OTOH there is a fairly famous photo of a StuG IIIF/8 named "Erika" where the camo appears to be applied with a sponge, so it varies…

Damon.

Every vehicle in the desert was heavily caked and streaked with dust, and both sides' vehicles in a battle are all streaked with exactly the same colour dust from the ground they're fighting on!

some were expertly painted others look like kids did it, depends on the crew or maintenance personel

Caunter was applied to a set pattern/ scheme, I believe at rear depots

…however other camo was applied in the field and as others have pointed out was down to individual crews…..what was available materials wise, time wise and how close to the front line you were…….

As Gerand says I have seen pics of Sherman's in winter of 44 who look like they have had some form of white wash applied with mops…..

You ain't too worried about the detail if you can be stonked at any moment………

Speaking of odd camo schemes, there is a photo of a German pz III IIRC where the winter camo was applied with chalk scribbled over the base paint. So sometimes the crews could be pretty…creative… :)

Damon.

I think if you could recreate the effects on that grant and had a picture of what you were mimicking you'd be golden in a competition. You would of course have to apply some over the top weathering to it all….

As pointed out, German stuff was coming out of the factories painted in summer-fall 1944, and it looks as though the DAK stuff had mostly been given a hasty but professional repaint before being shipped to Africa. But the brown over gray 1940 and the three-color job on older equipment in 1943 would have been done in the field with tremendous variation. (For that matter, a lot of older equipment never got the three-color paint job, and I've seen 1944 photos of tanks--sometimes captured French--still in panzer gray.
All the US disruptive patterns, and I think all the British except Caunter was field expedient with local variations, but at least it was paint--or whitewash. The German cans of color could be dissolved with different solvents, and each one will vary the colors.
As noted, the dust was so bad in the Western Desert that we have numerous accounts of vehicles falling in with the wrong formations, My tanks are much more distinctive than Rommel's or O'Connor's.

Here is a picture that Buck Surdu posted here on TMP with some info of his recent WWII ruleset Combat Patrol.

By the looks of the paint job, I think there was a requirement for the crew to be thoroughly drunk before the mops and brushes were handed out. LOL!

TMP link

I was once at a military modeling show, Two hobbyist were arguing about how a model's white camo was applied.

A old veteran chimed in and said "It was to clean, They applied it with a mop in a really hurry"

It varied over time and from army to army and vehicle to vehicle. I remember reading once on a model site when someone gave a "formula" for mixing US Olive Drab. "That's the way they did it in the field" he said. I asked my Dad, he said that they just opened a can that the Army sent them, they didn't mix colors in the field. Whitewash in most of the Armies was often applied by the crews themselves, they were given a can (or cans) and it was often applied with mops. By the end of the winter most "white" camo jobs looked pretty ratty, just look at photos from the time. Many US tanks in North Africa were camouflaged simply by covering parts with mud. Many of the camo jobs are just too neat. Another thing though that is often overdone is rust. As my Dad said they were using the equipment every day, it didn't have a chance to rust.

If I submitted a 1/35 model of this at a convention, I would be kicked out with my fingers broken, so I could never paint again.

Yeah, sometimes those IPMS guys can be real sticklers. I've seen actual US Army tanks like M60s and M1s, in current use, with plenty of overspray on tires and even sometimes a little on the tracks but boy if you showed up at a show with that they'd laugh you right out. It's why frankly I build and paint for my own enjoyment.

+1 to the too much rust. And don't get me started on panel shading or model aeroplanes

Even in Desert Storm, my unit covered our green trucks in mud to camouflage them. In addition, we had some vehicles in factory supplied 3 color patterns and older vehicles that had been camoed at various times in various patterns and with various touchups done to fix damaged or rusted parts.

One of my favorite tankie photos in the Flames of War Desert Rats book, from the 1st edition.
It shows a Grant tank, with very streaky camo applied. Some patches are thin, and you can see a lot of spots where the paint ran.

As other's have said "it depends".

The WWII British for example, had specific patterns they used for much of their camo, with the designs laid out in official documents that were sent out to the army. Whoever painted these tanks was expected to adhere to the official colors and pattern. Even here, though, there were occasions in Tunisia (IIRC) where tanks were rushed from the UK to Africa and the crews used mud to apply field expedient camo using whatever pattern they chose.

Germans used camo applied in the field, often by the vehicle crews themselves, for much of the war. The tank would be sent out painted "dunklegelb" along with a can of green paint and a can of brown paint. The idea was that camo colors and patterns could be painted to match local conditions. This resulted in some carefully painted or camo scheme applied by brush or air gun, and others just slopped on with mops.