Well, I've been looking around at German AFV camo, which is well off my usual set of colours, and looking at the options.
The kit options are for Field Grey (yawn), Dunkelgelb (zzz) or the three colour Dark Yellow/Red/Green (which
might just have been done before). There's also an option for a captured one used by the US military police, but then I'd need a figure in a different uniform!
Now I have done Commonwealth AFVs from 8th Army, so an Afrika Korps Kettenkrad would fit in quite well.
The original Afrika Korps vehicles arrived in field grey during 1941, which was obviously pretty useless in desert warfare. Later in 1941 a directive for a two tone camo scheme went out.
Heeresmitteilungen 1941 281 specified a two tone tropical scheme of RAL 8000 Gelbbraun/
Grunbraun base with one third of the vehicle overpainted in RAL7008 Khakibraun. As usual with AFV colours, the shades are open to interpretation, and the weathering was severe anyway. So "reasonable accuracy" applies
The other nice thing about HM 1941 281 is that it doesn't specify any patterns, so stripes, patches and mottles are allowed. This means I can use my Artistic Licence (which already carries penalty points for Painting Without Due Care and Attention, and Careless Painting
). Oh goody gumdrops.
I am grateful for a very useful article by Mike Cooper on this topic
http://www.matadormodels.co.uk/tank_mus ... ermany.htm;
As I use Vallejo Model Colour and Model Air, I looked up the equivalents of the two specified colours (near the bottom of this post):
http://cs.finescale.com/mobile/forums/t ... dID=138929;
Then I trotted off to the LMS to get the Vallejo Air versions. Actually, it snowed again today, so slithered about in the car was more like it!
The Vallejo Air equivalents are
RAL 8000 -> Val Air 030 (add yellow for scale)
RAL 7008 -> Val Air 024 Khaki brown
It happens that the Tiger tank at Bovington, had been painted in these colours at some point
http://www.tiger-tank.com/secure/journal27.htm;
so I even have some general idea as to the colours
If younger son goes to sleep soon
I'll have a little play with the colours
Cheers
Andrew
