"Italian Artillery" Topic

I just assembled the Waterloo "Italian Heavy Gun" and the crew are shown with khaki pith helmets and grey uniforms. Is this appropriate for the desert, or should I paint them khaki?

I have found the Flames of War suggested colors for the desert to be pretty accurate
Uniform Desert Yellow (977)
Puttees Olive Grey (888)
Helmets Green Ochre (914)
Webbing Yellow Green (881)

Paint them either way you want. The Italians wore both uniforms in the desert.

And since resupply was always iffy, I imagine they wore whatever they could get – Italian of any type, German, British, etc.

Jim

you can do as BP and ColCampbell suggested…but from the picts i saw grey uniform was certainly used more in Tunisia than Western Desert…in my opinion all kaki uniform is more iconic of the Desert War…consider also that the crew of this very plastic set has been depicted in perfet outfit even with imaculate pith helmet …so we can imagine that they are from new unit sent to the front in immaculate overseas tropical uniform…otherwise a seasoned unit would have choosed, according to the pictures, a mixture of kaki and grey uniforms and service caps, steel helmets ecc..NB: i suggest you to paint the gun in grey-green not kaki/sand..so you can use it in other theaters..despite the fact that majority of Italian big guns sent to the colonies were left in Grey Green..you should take into account that this gun saw limited service in Western Desert while is was broadly used in Russian and , after the armistice, many were captured by Germans

The Gray-Green uniform was standard, the khaki was for overseas "tropical" service, most notably in North Africa.

Units that went over in the pre-war period were pretty completely equipped for their tropical assignments.

Units that went over after the disastrous losses in 1941 and particularly 1942 were often not completely equipped for their assignments.

Some units went over piecemeal, one battalion or battery at a time. In these cases again the re-equipping with tropical kit was hap-hazard. You could easily make the case with your artillery formation -- shipped over in response to dire need, before their parent regiment / division could be re-equipped with tropical wear.

And replacement materials were also not entirely tropical kit. So even if a unit started fully equipped with tropical wear (ie: the sun helmets), those portions that wore out more quickly (ie: the pants and shirts) might well have been replaced by non-tropical replacement kit.

So … if you put sun helmets and Continental uniforms on your soldiers it is not by any means wrong, but it does indicate they are probably late arrivals to the theater. Whether that means Tunisia (likely), or El Alamein (less likely, but possible), is up to you.*

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

*Note: Well, of course it's up to you in any case. But if you want a credible explanation for their appearance, you have one for 1942/43 use.