"What colour was it...?" Topic

Interesting reading…

PDF link

Hope you enjoy!

Amicalement
Armand

Very interesting article.

Glad you enjoyed it my friend!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

The author overlooks the fact that many newspapers DID use color photos – they just screened them to black-and-white, thus introducing yet another source of color inaccuracy.

Fascinating to anyone interested in photography or indeed trying to interpret the evidence we are left with when we try to paint miniatures

I have not seen this before. Great read!

Happy you like it too my friends!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

I recall several years ago (more than 10 I'm sure) reading the accounts of a modeller who struck up a conversation with an elderly man in a hobby shop in the mid-west (I want to say Ohio, but could well be wrong).

IIRC the author was in fact the guy behind the counter at said hobby shop, and this fellow walked in and was looking at models. As the conversation progressed, the gentleman came to reveal that he had been a commander in the 501st s.PzAbt in Tunisia (whether he was a platoon, company, Abteilung, or just tank commander I can't recall). He had been captured at the end of the Tunisian campaign, and had been transported to the US mid-west as a PoW for the remainder of the war. After the war, he stayed on, and had lived there ever since.

Anyway, the article was about this individual's effort to build a 1/35 scale model and diorama of that fellow's tank and present to him as a gift.

In that process there was some discussion of the colors. Contrary to all that this modeler had found on the subject up to that point, and all of the colorizations in all of the books, the former Tiger tanker told him that the 501st's Tigers were panzer gray, with a bit of brown-green camo applied after they had been received.

The article ended with some nice pics of the diorama, and the modeler presenting it to this old fellow in the store.

Don't recall where the article appeared, but I expect an enterprising google-miester could find it again. At least in this one case, of the color pics of this one model, there is some first-person testimony of the appropriateness of the color scheme.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I remember that same article Mark, and have looked for it again to no avail. It was a fascinating story.

IIRC at one point the store owner/model maker was asking about the white kill stripes on the barrel. He wanted to make it an accurate portrayal of his vehicle, so he asked how many to use.

And the old tank commander got really sheepish about it. Said it was something done during the war to raise morale, but to talk about such things post war seemed like bragging.

The store owner did some additional research, looking for photos of Tigers in Tunisia, and stumbled upon one he believed was the tankers vehicle. And there were a LOT of stripes on the barrel.

Again, it was a great post to read. And yes, I remember there being all the research into the proper colors, only to be told by someone who was actually there that the books were often wrong. Vehicles shipped in batches, and they could be painted any number of ways at the factory, and then be re-routed to their final destination, "out of color" so to speak, because the batch was originally consigned to some other unit in some other theater.

Quite interesting … thanks!

Amicalement
Armand