"German WW1 artillery colors" Topic

Can anyone tell me what color were German guns painted in 1914?

Grey. The camouflage patterns did not appear until later in the war.

Robert

Just found on the web:
In 1914, the standard scheme used on all German Guns was Feldgrau Overall. The exact shade of this Feldgrau – literally:"Field Grey"- was investigated in the 1990-ies when a replica A7V was built in Germany: a large number of surviving WW1 equipment was examined for traces of colours, and it was found out that what is called "Feldgrau" was in reality a pretty wide spectrum of colours, ranging from Green to Grey. This means that it is hard to go really wrong on "Feldgrau". If one is to recommend one colour, however, to use for Feldgrau it is the Humbrol #31 Slate Grey. Guns painted in Feldgrau could be seen all through the war.

with these references:
5. References
David Nash:"German Artillery 1914-1918". Almark Publications 1970.Herbert Jäger:"German Artillery of World War One". The Crowood Press 2001.Alfred Muther:"Das Gerät der Artillerie vor, in und nach dem Weltkrieg". Berlin 1927-1933.

regarding shades.

It would be difficult to think that an actual example of paint from 100 years ago would be the same shade today, so you are counting on a good guess.

Here is a restoration of a period limber:
link

And a colorized photo, very much more green:
link

I went through something similar to this quest about 18 years ago. I was helping our National Guard office determine what color to paint several WW1 German guns that the state owns. These were "war trophies" distributed to the several states in the early 1920s. It took a while but we finally decided on a slate of colors for both Feldgrau and camouflage pattern painting. They ended up matching my paint swatches with available military paints for a grey that seemed to fit the bill.

Here are two posts that I made about the guns:

link

link

The two on the capitol grounds are actually 105mm not 150mm (correctted in the second link). And the 77mm featured in the second link has since been moved to the Mississippi Military Museum at Camp Shelby, south of Hattiesburg.

Jim

I've painted my guns a little grayer than the color I use for the uniforms. Sorry I can't post a photo.

Thank you all for your help, I recently ordered a "Big Bertha" siege howitzer from Butlers Printed Models, and needed this information. Again many thanks to everyone who replied