"german tank urban camouflage?" Topic

I'm painting up some German AFV's for Berlin street fighting. Of course there are a lot of parks in the city. Looking through my 1945 German colors camouflage profile guide, I note a number of vehicles with very striking straight edge designs. Were there some instructions to paint this to suit an urban setting?

If it's the one I'm thinking of--lots of primer red showing--Bovington says it's the last authorized pattern and designed to use less paint. But of course by then there is a lot of street fighting. That might account for the straight edges.

A further explanation on the straight edges could be the use of brushes rather than spraying the colours. This tended to lead to straighter and sharper results.

link

In WWII German tanks were sometimes camouflaged at the factory to a uniform scheme. Out in the field as conditions and seasons changed tanks were camouflaged by the troops in the unit. They were supposed to be spray painted and usually they were but not always. The troops were given a colored paste to mix with gasoline, paint thinner and make paint with it. As you can imagine lots of variation on the specific color.

So you can really do almost anything you want and no one can tell you it's wrong as long as it is reasonable.

I got a couple used Roco Tiger II tanks that someone had camouflaged poorly about 20 years ago. The scheme was interesting and the paint well applied but it did not look authentic to me.

So about a year ago I added some additional paint to make it look like the "ambush" scheme, but in black and gray rather than in green and tan.

I think it turned out well. Check out the link to my blog entry that shows photos and some text. My intention, like yours, was to use them for Berlin street fighting.

Good luck.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek

There was a lot of latitude at unit level, although generally companies were painted the same. Some units seemed to favour hard edged patterns in general, particularly 21st Panzer in Normandy, 5th SS Viking and 11th panzer. The 21st panzer designs often seem to be brush painted instead of sprayed. I guess they didn't have much else to do in France.

I did read about one unfortunate company commander who got chewed out by the CO when he painted his Tiger company in a stupid zebra stripe pattern which stuck out like a sore thumb. iirc that was in one of Wolfgang Schneiders books.

So, no, afaik there wasn't a special urban camo scheme used by the Germans. Wargamers and modellers tend to obsess way too much about this stuff. iirc it was Otto Carius who said he couldnt really describe what colour his tanks were, they were all just a sort of filthy browny green.

Having said that, I usually base my camo schemes on photos.

Thanks guys. Those Roco Tiger 2s look great… I used to have some back in the day (70s). I'm wondering about the book Panzers in Berlin 1945 for some ideas…but at £45.00 GBP it's an expensive buy…I'll try inter library loan :)