I’m currently building Takoms T-55 and replicating the Croatian Marina tank. The color call out calls for ammo mig 081 olive drab, i went to look and see if i had the right one and didn’t. I was curious and looked at the miniart kit that shows the same camo pattern for Marina and it had a different shade of green. I believe it was ammo mig 083 Zashchitniy Zeleno. My question is which is the proper shade of green?
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The official color for all Yugo tanks is SMB, (Sivo Maslinasta boja) or Grey Olive paint. There is no official description and all suppliers mixed their own so there was a lot of variety. Officially it could be either a slightly greener RAL6013 when new or if the tank was never repainted and it was purchased in the 60ies from Russia ammo mig 083 Zashchitniy Zeleno can can be correct (but not likely)
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There are photos of the real tank in the books I mentioned when you asked about the crew’s uniforms 
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If you use Tamiya try their field grey. It’s a grey green shade. You may have to lighten it a bit. Good luck.
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@Jakko I’ll have to start ordering those books now that this project is underway. Thank you for reminding me!
Sounds like this may be a bit of mixing and matching paint trying to get the right coloring.
May lean towards the Zashchitniy Zeleno and see about playing with i Lt by adding shades of grey. Another option is getting the tamiya field grey like @Armorsmith suggested.
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Basic color would be Revel 362, or faded OD. Start with OD and add white, along with a bit of yellow. That was a basic color. As i remember, Croatians used other colors to differentiate their tanks from Yugoslav ones, so IIRC dark green, outlined with brown.
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@iguanac thank you!
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I’ve decided to pull those books off the shelf again and take a look
Page 26 of The Balkans on Fire appears to show a kind of grey-green colour, but the tank is wet so it’s very hard to make out. What is clear is that there are black swirls, applied with an aerosol can by the looks of it, and seemingly also a kind of sand or khaki as well, under the black swirls.
There’s also a photo of Marina on one of the last pages of The Balkans at War but it’s black-and-white so no real use for working out the colours, except for the placement of some of the black swirls. It also reveals that the bright blue blob visible on the turret stowage bin in the other book, is the tank’s name.
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Well, the Takom kit leaves 2 versions of T55A: the russian and the Czech. Not the polish version but Marina is a polish build tank…
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@Jakko I’m looking up those books as we speak. It’s been a hectic few days. I have looked at other pictures of the tank and honestly we are at the mercy of lighting for some pictures.
@StephaneHERVE what’s the main difference ?
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Don’t sweat the color so much. Pick something close. After clear gloss, weathering, and clear flat you’d be hard pressed to tell what the original color was anyway. Just remember that weathering will probably darken the original color.
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@Armorsmith that’s true, i haven’t different greens I’m going to play with.
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Gregory: the bigest differences between the russian, Cz or polish build T55 are gthe engine decks. Polish one looks a mix of a T54 one and Cz one.
The way to see differences is to go to Miniart website and looks at the 3 various versions listed. When you open the 3D drawings of each versions it’s quite easy to see how there’re differents.
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@StephaneHERVE that’s interesting, i think i saw somewhere that the Czech variant was also produced in Poland but it may have been a much later, even possible post Cold War production/ upgrade.
Edit: weren’t most Croatian tanks captured from Yugoslavia stocks. My reading indicates that Yugoslavia used Czech built variants primarily.
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Well from the hundreds photos i owns of Ex Yougoslavian T55 (used by croates, bosnians, solvenians and serbs) it seems 60% are polish build, 30% russian and 10% Cz!
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@StephaneHERVE that’s amazing, how much did the different variants cause of a headache for maintenance. Or were the differences merely cosmetic in nature?
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There were several batches of tanks received, first 3 batches were from USSR, then from Poland and the last one from Czechoslovakia. Most visible difference is that Soviet ones lacked fron left box on the turret, and that the Czech had additional back left box on the turret.
I don’t think that Soviert ones are so visible in the photos, Czech and Polish produced vehcles are dominating.
Here is a web page, (in Serbian only, but google translate might do the job here) with a history and photo gallery Tenk T-55
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Marina did not have a box on the left rear of the turret, so I take it that it was a Polish-produced tank.
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@iguanac thank you girl the website and information!
@Jakko I’m going to need to study the instructions and see what they have for it.
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And Marina don’t have the 3 little mounting bracket on the left side of turret (from the front) that Cz one have.
The rear photo of Marina show that this T55 isn’t a russian one.
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