"Stalking the Green Tiger" Topic

Yeah, I know. A myth. But I just picked up a copy of Spring & Tucker-Jones Rommel's Afrika Korps in Colour. Page 92 has two shots of a Panzer III H or early J in Tunisia. One shot MIGHT be a somewhat faded Panzer Gray with a dark disruptive, though it looks greenish to me. But you can't call the other one anything but green.

Panzer III is not Tiger, of course. But it's evidence that someone in Tunisia thought green tanks were a good idea and had the paint and the authority to do something about it. Moves me from an unbeliever in the green Tigers to someone prepared to consider the possibility. Of course, I want them to be true: they'd literally add color to my North Africa microscale Germans.

Has anyone else seen those pictures? Other pictures?

According to my recent research, the two Tiger abteilung (501st & 504th) that were sent to Tunisia were painted in the standard "panzer yellow" with green disruptive overpaint. The abteilungen had both Pz-VI and Pz-III tanks since the lighter tanks were used as "escorts" for their heavier brothers.

I'd suggest doing some Google image searches and see what turns up.

The Pz-VI at the Bovington Museum is one of those.

Jim

The Bovingdon Tiger is painted in its original colour scheme. Sand with light green disruptive paint. The green is very light. I've done some Pz IIIs in the same scheme.

There are many photos of DAK tanks where the sand paint has worn off showing grey underneath. I always do mine grey first, with varying degrees of sand on top. There is one photo of a Pz III with a replacement turret which apparently hasn't been repainted at all.

It all fades and gets covered in dust anyway.

According to the painting guides in "Benghazi Handicap", DAK was always authorised (and issued) sand, green and brown paint for disruptive schemes. It just wasn't often applied, or was simply mixed together to produce a mid brown shade, which faded.

You can see photos of various vehicles and guns in what appeared to be dark brown jagged or soft edged schemes, and the Lorraine SP guns seem to have vertical green stripes. Most AFVs were plain though. There is a very common sequence of photos of an 88 battery with both the guns and prime movers in a sand and jagged brown pattern.

Anyway, I do a few DAK vehicles in camo, but mainly in lots of different shades of plain sand.

Iirc 10th Panzer in Tunisia was just in normal 3 colour camo.

I think the original source for green panzers in Tunisia was "Armor Camouflage & Markings, North Africa 1940-1943, Volume One" by George R. Bradford. See pages 80-81, where he mentions "pea green camouflage that was prominent on many of the vehicles that fought in Tunisia."

Yeah, Spring and Tucker-Jones were depressingly uniform on the DAK itself--much less variety of color than one sees on the typical wargame table.

I'll try to track down Bradford. Brighten my day and tell me he actually gives a source, or otherwise provides supporting evidence?

The Bovington Tiger doesn't have any green on it at all.

It's in 2 shades of brown.

In his Acknowledgments, Bradford states he was aided by "people who could supply markings and camouflage facts from first hand experience in Africa." A few names are listed, but that's all.
Bradford was the director of the AFV Association, which I believe was one of the only groups actively researching and recording details and data on World War II armor in the 1970's.

Well, so much for tracking down Bradford. I've seen news media source like that. Thanks.

Battler, I'd disagree about Tiger 131. Dunkelgelb with a single disruptive color, but much less contrast than normal, and I'd hate to have to verbally describe the disruptive color. Certainly not full strength olive green or red brown. Maybe Martin's "very light green" but my art teachers would describe the hue as muddy, I think--and I don't think I'd bother with it in microscale or smaller. It simply wouldn't show. Yet it seems very likely that's how it left the factory.

The quest will continue.

"The Bovington Tiger doesn't have any green on it at all."

Call me colour blind, but it looks like OKs green to me irl, I was green when 131 appeared in "Fury", it is also green in most of the photos of the restoration project, although there are a couple where it looks brownish. Such are the vagaries of lighting.

The exact shade of green is the subject of intense debate on modelling forums, but is apparently RAL 7008, GrunGrau (grey green).

As Robert notes, it is so pale that it hardly contrasts at all with the sand. I can barely see it on 15mm models from a couple of feet away, I imagine it would be invisible on 6mm, let alone ne 3mm. Rather like the early war panzer grey and red brown scheme.

link

Agree that the distinction between the 2 colours is very slight.

But the only evidence of any green shading is in the German name for the shade, graugruen.

There's not even a base coat of dunkelgelb but a base coat of gelbraun, light brown.

So to me that's browns 2: greens nil.

Now that I'm among the experts, does anyone have any idea why googling "RAL 8020" images turns up two such different colors? I consistently get both a medium to yellowish brown and something more like "sand" or "khaki." Sadly, the latter is more consistent with color photos of the DAK, but I find it hard to believe that at some point Germany changed the hue associated with a given RAL number instead of just creating a new one.

Much of the confusion concerning Tiger 131 comes from the fact that early desert RAL8000 was found as the base color rather than RAL8020 which was the standard later AK base color. It was assumed that since there were shortages of "official" paint, they used what was available, in this case the RAL8000. I have seen photos of Italian vehicles in Tunisia with green painted in blotches over sand. Being as Tunisia was green in spring of 43, any green paint available was used to help camouflage at that time.