"British tanks camo in WWII" Topic

Hello.

I'm trying to build a WWII british 8th army and I'm finding some problem for the camouflage patterns of the vehicles of this army.

For the Germans and Italians, the camouflage seems simple, as it's nearly always the same. But seems the British used very unorthodox patterns.

In Europe seems the British used only allied green, at the beginning of the war and after Normandy. It seems it was also the colour of choice for the Oriental front.

But the real fun starts in the Mediterranean front. I've seen the British Matilda tanks wear the three colour pattern with orange-sand, sky blue and dark grey (or green) in straight lines, this pattern i've only seen again in the Honey Stuarts tanks but I do not know for how long it was used nor if it was a common pattern used by all arms.

Also I've seen a simple sand colour in all tank types.

There's a third pattern I've seen mainly for Grants, Lees and Crusaders with sand colour and dark grey or black lines, but not straight lines.

Also seems in Tunez the patterns changed and all tanks started applying a sand and green pattern, and I'm completely lost for the Sicilian and Italy campaigns.

Another question would be if the camo patterns only applied to tanks or all the vehicles and carriers.

Were could I find some specific info on this?.

Many thanks.

The story of British camoflague is complex, confusing & incompletely documented. The green(s) changed, the patterns changed & the whole thing is difficult to makje sense of. Mike Starmer is the expert on the field & his series of booklets on the topic is the best around. Alas they don't yet cover the whole war. Here are some links to start you off on the quest!

Here are links to some of Mikes work link
mafva.org.uk/Resources.asp

He also visits the FOW site from time to time & there is quite a bit of discussion there too.

Another good site is Barry Beldams Armoured Acorn site which has lovely colour plates. armouredacorn.com

In Europe the schemes were very varied as well, in the 1940 campaign there were various disruptive camouflage schemes, and whilst in theory by 1944 Olive Drab was the standard colour, in practice vehicles were only repainted when old stocks of camo paint were exhausted. The mid-war scheme was a mid brown base coat with various dark brown/black disruptive patterns.

Camo patterns could be applied to all vehicles (and frequently were) not just AFVs, but many vehicles were left plain – it was at the discretion of the unit CO.

In the desert there are only really three main schemes:

i) a basic sand ('light stone') overall. This was common throughout, especially on softskins and even many AFVs.

ii) Stone with the Caunter dazzle camo (the geometric lines in grey/blue/green/black/brown or whatever other colours were to hand). This is the scheme you've seen on the Matildas, but it was applied to everything, including (some)softsins. Widespread use of this had virtually died out by the end of 1941.

iii) Stone with black (or sometimes brown) disruptive in a more irregular pattern. This was quite common throughout the later (1942 onwards) part of the campaign.

Middle East command was pretty much a law unto itself when it came to regulations for camo schemes & vehicles markings.

Tunisia is a real problem as 8th Army was using the MEC scheme, whereas 1st Army was using the UK scheme (which is where the green tanks come from in Tunisia). For Sicily many of the vehicles were still in desert camo, but for the mainland Italian campaign they were mostly in more European colours.

Frankly, for a generic 8th Army type force just plain stone is a good bet, unless you re modelling specifc units in which case photo references are useful.

I completely agree with Martin and would also suggest that another option for you is to go with whatever you feel looks best on each model – I'd say as long as all the tanks in a specific unit were in the same colours then pretty much anything can be justified "historically". I'd suggest just avoiding anachronistic schemes (ie no Shermans or Grants in "Caunter") but otherwise you'd be ok.

Huw wrote: "Mike Starmer is the expert on the field"

And he's got a real bee in his bonnet about the use of light blue in the Caunter camoflage scheme. Basically he says it was never used.

andyboarer wrote: "I'd suggest just avoiding anachronistic schemes (ie no Shermans or Grants in "Caunter") but otherwise you'd be ok."

I've never seen a picture of a Crusader in Caunter either. But I'm quite willing to be contradicted here.

"I propose that no-one be allowed into a wargames show unless they are wearing the latest Hugo Boss or Versace suit."

Brigadier Peter Young found a normal M&S style three piece suit and a pocket watch entirely suitable garb for wargaming, no need to pull the boat out at Paul Smith. I don't think any self respecting wargamer would be seen dead in Versace.

Gah! What's wrong with TMP today??? That's not what I wrote… :-O

No, I wrote that on the thread about smelly wargamers and it followed me here, how strange!

Like Derek, I've never seen a Crusader in Caunter, even a Mark 1, lots of earlier cruisers in it though, so you may still come across it as a scheme in Operation Crusader.

wrt light blue, I tend to use a very light grey instead (which has a blueish hint), partly because it looks better and partly because that is what I have without mixing – a situation perhaps not unfamiliar to contemorary painters of tanks. The 'official' list of disruptive camo paint available is bewildering, how many shades of sand/cream/beige can there be….

I've got loads of A13s and Vickers Mk VIs in blue Caunter. Mr Starmer's got me convinced that I need to repaint them.

Martin Rapier wrote: "iii) Stone with black (or sometimes brown) disruptive in a more irregular pattern. This was quite common throughout the later (1942 onwards) part of the campaign."

Sometimes this variant is seen with a relatively thin white line surrounding the black areas. As in picture

The story I've heard is that these white lines were applied by soldiers from specialist camoflage units who painted them on as guidelines before leaving the tank crews to put the camoflage paint on themselves. Supposedly some units painted up to the inside of the white lines while other units painted to the outside.

Don't know if it's true, but it's a good story.

I've only seen photos of Crusaders in the wavy charcoal cammo pattern or plain sand. Personally, I think the photo evidence that can be postitively dated shows that after Caunter died out in early 41 or so the majority of vehicles were plain sand until summer/fall of 42 when the Alamein scheme seems to pop up on Shermans and Grants. Like others have mentioned, Mike Starmer has convinced me about the colours of Caunter, and sky blue is not one of them!

"Don't know if it's true, but it's a good story."

The offical line on outlining the disruptive pattern in a contrasting colour was that this was 'of very limited effectiveness'. This seems to have been an observation in relation to French practice rather than the desert though.

It does look very nice on the wargames table of course!

Many thanks to all of you for such amount of info. The links provided are also very good info and probably I'll buy Starmer books which seems very informative.

I have two questions though:

- Why the War museum at London and the Bovington tank museum have tanks with blue as caunter colour?. If this is a myth were does it begins?.

- How is the "mickey mouse" scheme?, is it also the camo used at El Alamein?.

Thank you all for your kind help.

Mickey Mouse is a variant of foliage pattern camo – the idea was to paint the lower sides and top/upper sides of the vehicles a very dark colour and extend some of the top colour down onto the sides. The exact pattern could be somewhat irregular, or sometimes the jazzy 'Micky Mouse' circular pattern.

AFAIK it was wasn't used at El Alamein, just Europe.

This site on the Canadians has some nice examples of MTP46 foliage camo as well as pics of Mickey Mouse etc.

link

Palafox: Mike Starmer seems to believe that it began with people saying the tanks were painted the same colour as the undersides of RAF planes. Which in the desert was a silver grey colour rather than the duck egg blue seen in the UK.

No. The Mickey Mouse scheme is different. Dark greeen base with mickey mouse pattern in black.

link
link

Thank you again for your help, gentlemen.

I have just bought a modellers magazine (Panzer Aces, nš 8) because I paint my 15mm tanks with airbrush and there's a nice Matilda in it with the right Caunter scheme. The faded light grey has certain far bluish tone over the stone base colour (the pearl grey was applied with Tamiya colours that had nothing to do with blue) so this is a possible origin of the confussion with the blue.

I'll send an email to Mike Starmer asking him about the books.

Thank you again.

Just for curiosity.

I0ve found some online photos of the painted model I found in the magazine. Looks real.

link

Would any of you care to suggest a good model paint colour to represent the basic stone colour? Preferably Tamiya or GW.

Is it a light yellowy brown, or more of a light grey/brown?

The Tamiyas recommendation I found here would be

- 40% XF57 (buff), 40% XF2 (white), 10% XF21 (sky) ,10% XF4 (Yellow Green)

It would be a sand colour.

That model is incredible.

What rules does he use?

"Mickey Mouse" was 21st Army Group only and wasn't used on tanks.

There are some examples of a black disruptive pattern applied to tanks of 21st army group, it isn't "micky mouse" but because its black over OD or possibly khaki brown, it gets referred to as such. I've seen only one example, it was an M4 sherman in normandy. It appears in "british armour in nW europe vol 1 d-day to belgium" printed by concord.

The word "erupts" occurs quite a lot in the picture captions!

thats not what i wrote!

In Tusia, both US and British forces locally cammoed their olive green vehicles using spots, sploches and lines of local mud. I've seen B&W pics of this, but no colour. I'm led to believe that the local mud was a very distinctive orangy red colour (though I could be mixing that (the colour) up with Italy).

I would've thought mud colour would be very localised, and may vary from one valley to the next.

Derek Hodge

p11 osprey NV 14 crusader cruiser tanks, a crusader mk 1 in Caunter, but its the only example I've seen, its also a more busy scheme than the usual caunter.

Its a bit of an oddity as its got the a13 style mantlet and early sand shields. I assume its from the initial batch that were driven around the docks without water in them, or so the story goes.
I'll have to dig up "desert tracks" which gives a unit by unit account of colour schemes in the appendices to see where these crusaders ended up.

Desert tracks?. Is it a book?.

Yep, its been out of print for ~30 years and its probably slightly out of date, but its a pretty good reference.

its got a few colour chips in it. Only deals with 8th army up to el alemein/supercharge.

Just wondered if anyone's got any updates on this? There also seems to be a confusion between 'sand', which is like a paler version of DAK sand yellow, and 'stone' which is a different colour entirely: it's a light grey-pinkish colour.

I've seen charcoal black 'mickey mouse' disruptive pattern added to a pale sand colour (like on crusaders), and 'stone' colour more for artillery, or on tanks at least used more in Italy. I also understood that the 'Mickey mouse' pattern began on airfield buildings.

Bearing in mind how many people fought there, you'd think there'd be some left who could remember the colours! But maybe colour goes squiffy in memories.

Way back in early to mid 70s desert was my main interest.
Bradford's "Armour camouflage and markings North Africa 1940-43" was my bible.

My first ever "interview" was with a desert veteran.
I bought "valentine in north africa" book and the clerk pointed out there was a desert veteran worked close by.
I talked to the poor bloke at length a number of times and his memory seemed pretty good.
Shown him models I made and he could tell me what all those bins on the tank had in them and what crews would usually have chucked and what else they added.

The exact shade whatever was on a tank was of remarkably little import to someone whilst there.
That they had to bathe in petrol because water was so scarce sticks in their mind more.
Germans particularly prized British tins of jam…
Stuff you would never have thought of was what they thought important.

"Pink" was post war in desert camo and not really very pink neither.

Personally, I think dull blue looks better than light grey in Caunter. I also think it more likely.

It's interesting about the veterans. There were artists out there who'd be more likely to remember colours, but unfortunately they seemed more interested in the landscape than tank colours. However I did see a depiction of an LRDG jeep painted pure white. White was also used for 'camo' smocks given to forward observers.

What makes you think blue more likely? Bovington has blue on a Matilda, and I can see how it could look against the sky….but not many agree it's right

Silver Grey paint faded very quickly to a pale dull blue.

So a straight pale grey would represent the vehicle just after the guy finished with his paint brush.

IIRC in the 1970s the Bovington Matilda was a mid blue.