"SADF Armour" Topic

I'm looking for something with good colour guide which doesn't just look like dust/mud/brush – I mean that's real conditions but what was under that? (i.e. vehicle parade ground colour)

Thanks
John FoA

John,
If memory serves me, the color is a tan that has a lot of white in it. If you've seen paint color chips for the British vehicles in Operation Desert Storm it is something like that. Much lighter than Afrika Korps Mustard. I believe that Testors Model Master makes the color in bottles and spray cans. After a week in the South African countryside, however, the color quickly turned to a darker tan.

John,

Greetings. It depends on what SADF vehicles specifically, and then what year you are looking at. for 70's-80's, some were in a dark sand color (Ratels, Buffels, Casspirs, etc.), some in an drab-green (Oliphants, Elands, Land Rovers, etc.), 90's and above many are in a 3-tone light sand, brown and green camo.

Just finished the first phase of my SADF in 15mm, and found Vallejo Dark Sand as the perfect base color found on the Ratel's, Buffel's, etc., you can find the pics here:

link

Have other vehicles I am working on that will be in the olive/green overall color.

Some links that may be of help:

link

link

geocities.com/sa_bushwar2

Paul

John,

Just to add, the Vallejo Dark Sand is the color after a few weeks in the field as aegis stated, and he is correct on the overall base color as is nicely shown in the Buffel pic in the 3rd link above.

The Bush War page is the best overall on the subject, here is the link to the main page:

link

It took me a while to track down good print references on the olive/green color mentioned in my post above, mainly used on the Oliphant/Centurion tank, support vehicles and some of the Elands, nothing useful online unfortunately (that I have located at any rate).

Wanted to add an additional link that may be of use:

link

Not to make this thread even longer :-) However I did realize that I have been incorrectly spelling "Olifant" as "Oliphant" :-)

Thanks most interesting and helpful.

Now of to paint my Eland 90

John FoA

Oh yes and Olifant too, (Mk1).

Oh yes, forgot to ask, those 15mm buffels, is the photo viewed back to front or is the drivers cab actually on the wrong side? Or are the rare right hand drive versions – UK export?

Also those SADF sites have loads of photos but exposure is so bloody difficult to read in terms of colour. The same vehicle can seem different colour from picture to picture.

Regards and thanks again

John FoA

I think they're late model Buffels, also sometimes referred to as Bulldogs. They're based on the Samil 20 chassis and right hand drive, rather than the earlier left hand cab models.

As for the colour of vehicles, yes it varies hugely with lighting. I don't have the link handy, but there's an article somewhere by a South African captain who modelled his own Ratel command vehicle in 1/48. For factory fresh paint, he said that Humbrol 29 earth was spot on, but you'll rarely see a photo that looks even close.

Dom.

PS – That colour is for a Ratel in the '80s. Elands were usually the same at the time, although Olifants as already noted were usually a green shade.

Dom thanks for that – you are a star

John FoA

My pelasure; found the Ratel article as well: link

Dom.

Here's that article:

link

The official SADF vehicle colour was 'Dark Earth'. You read some people calling it 'Nutria', but that was the uniform colour and was more greenish.

I have to disagree with Dom. I use Humbrol 29, as recommended by this SANDF officer and when mixed with white to tone it up and then liberally drybrushed with dusty tones it looks sweet.

I've only found one colour photo of an olifant and that was also Dark Earth.

32 Bn trialled the camouflage scheme seen in this article for its Ratel 90s during the bushwar. It was found to be extremely effective at night against night vision devices. The sceme was adopted by the SADF as a whole after the war, but the SANDF reverted to plain Dark Earth in order to save money (allied to the fact that they didn't have any potential enemies who could afford to buy sophisticated night vision aids).

The Bulldog is a different vehicle to the Buffel. Though it looks very similar, it is distinctly larger and is right-hand drive (as Dom says, it's based on the Samil, whereas the Buffel is based on the Unimog). It was built to the specific requirements of the South African Air Force Regiment, so is rather rare – I'm constantly baffled as to why PP chose to model it in preference to the Buffel or Casspir?!!

The Bulldog is also the base vehicle for the Ystervark 20mm AA vehicle, so does have further uses if you want to convert some (I'm working on some Ystervarks at the moment).

I should add that Olive Drab was the SADF 'home service' colour. Deployment colour for ops in SWA, Angola, etc was Dark Earth. I expect that some vehicles still turned up in Olive Drab though.

R Mark Davis

Thanks for that input. Seen lots of photos with armour (AFV) in greenish colour and APV/IFVs in 'Dark earth' so I suppose both are okay

John FoA

I guess so – I haven't seen any colour photos of OD vehicles actually in SWA or Angola though. All the pics I've seen of that scheme depict troops on exercise in SA itself.

interesting and great information thanks guys needing this !..

what colour would you use to paint the olifant/centurion tanks ? ..vallejo or otherwise ..

thomas

I'm not up on Vallejo yet (I'm in the process of changing from Humbrol), but the official colour is Dark Earth, which seems to have remained unchanged since WW2. So either have a search to see which Vallejo shade does for Dark Earth for British armour in WW2, or search to see which is the equivalent for Humbrol 29.

These are the equivalent colours if the chart below is to be trusted:

scaleworld.webs.com/Colour%20Charts/Vallejo/Hum-V.png

Humbrol 26 = Vallejo 879 green-brown

Humbrol 29 = 921 English uniform