I’m trying to figure out what colors would be appropriate for this Stug 3 F/8. I came across this colorized photo on reddit depicting a stug from the Lehr Batterie 901.
Someone in the comments was discussing the two-tone camouflage scheme and how AK printed color references which matched the colors shown in the image. But that person deleted their account and the person who made the colorized image is no longer active. After doing more research it’s clear that there was some form of two-tone camouflage, which you can make out even in the black and white images.
Does anyone know what colors these are supposed to be on the two-tone camouflage scheme? At first I thought it had to be white but it’s nowhere close to the color of the snow in any of the photographs, though it does seem quite light still. Is it another shade of gray? And does anyone have other references/color sets which might match this?
Does the Dragon stug kit match this description? Despite the markings being correct, the color schemes seem different and the references images also seemingly depict a two-tone camouflage.
I figured if anyone could tell me what might be going on it’d be a good folks here. So I hope someone can let me know what colors would be appropriate to match. Thanks for you time!
When compared to snow or camouflage white (high contrast), dark yellow comes out a deep grey, so you might want to be careful with interpreting the colours in that first picture. The mill-marking has practically the same shade of grey, yet is interpreted as bright yellow in the colour picturs. Also does camouflage brown often come out lighter in shade then the green.
So I think we are looking at base dark yellow StuG with camouflage in either brown or green.
Put another way, Brown on Gray camouflage was for Poland (Fall) and France (Spring). Those photos are Winter. Winter means Russia. Russia was all Gray in 41, 42, and early 43. Around mid 43, everything becomes Yellow, usually with Brown and/or Green patches on top.
Whitewash is applied in winter. It washes off easily. When first applied, it makes a vehicle really white. After a couple rain showers, not so much.
So I am NOT a “know it all”, there were German units that experimented with two-tone camouflage i942. The only examples I know of were listed in Panzer Colours #1. I am going to use it on my planned 1/16 Marder II.
The colors were said to be, Panzer Gray base coat, with Hellgrun swaths
First of all, I would never trust a colorized photo. And trying to guess colors from a black&white photo is quite risky.
Standard grey/brown can be discarded as the StuG Ausf. F was produced long after this combination was no longer in use. As far as I know there were no green/grey camouflages, at least officially. There was no official green at that time for camouflage of WH vehicles, so, although not impossible, I think it would be very rare.
I would say we have 3 options:
Dust/dirt over grey. No mistery here and I would not rule it out.
Standard dark yellow and green, which looks darker due to the contrast with the snow, as Ron pointed above
Troppen camo, some vehicles on the Eastern Front did have this camo
First off, Welcome!
I’ve been here since 2011 but was around when the modelmakers subreddit was formed.
It’s a great place to show off finished pieces but one isn’t likely to get a whole lot of specialty advice since there’s such a broad range of genres and interests.
I’m glad you came here.
This is during one of the big “transition periods” as far as equipment and paint goes.
These new Stug III F’s and F8’s initially had dark grey and were heavily weathered by the dust on the Eastern Front during the very late summer/autumn of 1942.
Some were actually painted in colors usable for deployment to North Africa. The famous photos fo the Stug III f’s and pioneers and grenadiers of IR 577 in Stalingrad are a good example of this. They had been painted in colors suitable for North Africa and then had a good coating of Steppe dust and the brown-grey homogenous moon dust that layered Stalingrad itself.
You could go with either of these options and simply add a winter wash that’s heavily chipped. That’s what I’d do.
Here’s some info on the late 42 documentation;
"1. In place of the dark gray/dark brown or single-color dark gray patterns (1940 Army bulletin page 382 item 864 paragraph 1), the equipment - including all motor vehicles - in use with the units in Africa must be given a paintwork of yellow-brown RAL 8000/gray-green RAL 7008, both matt.
This pattern is to be created in the same way as the previous one, with yellow-brown in place of dark gray, and gray-green in place of dark brown.
The colors should not meet using sharp edges. Instead, they must transition gradually. Small surfaces (including spoke and disk wheels) can be kept in one color. Yellow-brown is predominant, in the approximate relationship of two thirds yellow-brown and one third gray-green.
The paint is to be procured by the troops. Supply companies are mentioned in H. B. Bl. 1940 part C page 180 item 535 and page 531 item 1269."
My favorite scheme is the 1/3 “pea green” 2/3 panzer gray of late ‘42, (IIRC, that’s how Tamiya’s Wespe is depicted) oversprayed with 2/3 coverage with panzer yellow.
I surmise the StuG is the green-striped gray, pre-dunkelgelb.
A lot of vehicles on the southern Ostfront were painted in “Tropen” colours, starting I believe in ‘42 and definitely to be found in ‘43.
The current “Tropen” scheme was the lighter one, based on RAL8020, but in many cases the older scheme was used - including all of the Tigers. I literally cannot find a grey Tiger in that zone, except for the ones diverted from Leningrad.
Here’s an example. Research implies that this Tiger is almost new and has never had whitewash over its original paint RAL8000 / RAL7008. Photographers tend to expose winter shots such that the snow doesn’t “wash out” and that causes the colours to appear darker than they would in another environment.
In the case of Tigers we know that the Tiger production pipeline was still using those old colours when this vehicle was issued. And we know the date and region of this photo. Tracking down the same data for your Stug photo might be helpful.
@Nate_W That’s the scheme! I am a coin toss whether it like the green/gray or those colors with Dunkelgelb. Both look great.
@DByrden Tropen, that’s great information. I think I’ll paint that the next Tiger I build. IIRC, some Pzr 38(t)s in the Caucuses were painted with “Afrika Korps” colors (sorry, can’t recall the RAL numbers). Is that true?
Thank you so much for all the comments. I really appreciate all of you that took the time to comment. I thought I had a decent handle on the color schemes of this time period but it is so much more in depth and complicated than I could have imagined! I did some more digging to see if I could find some more references and information based on the suggestion from @DByrden .
It looks like my original photo of interest comes from Walter J Spielberger’s Sturmgeschutz & Its Variants. However, the captions provide no timeline. The very next page has another photo of Lehr Batterie 901 (perhaps the same stug and 252 as the original image) but no additional description save for it perhaps implying that these were taken in Winter 1942?
I found another source for a Lehr Batterie 901 stug but once again there is no date information and with the picture quality I can’t even place what season this would be.
Based on the color references from @Nate_W I agree with @JPTRR and @Whitney_Foreman that the green striping seems likely, though I really do wish I had more color references and color schemes to go off of. I do also appreciate your comments @RonW@Damraska@varanusk , I thought this would be simple but I never thought I’d have to consider so much from B&W pictures. Also @Nate_W , which book did you get the color references from they look very nice!
Be very careful with illustrations from the original “Panzer Colours”. This book is now going on 50 years old and more recent research has brought many of Culver and Murphy’s assumptions into question. Some are due to misinterpretation of original photographs, in that the dates are wrong. A very good example of this is the photos concerning the Wespe that features in Panzer Colours as a colour plate and which Tamiya used for its box art and colour guide. We now know, thanks to extensive research by Pierre Tiquet and Charles Trang, that far from being taken in 1942, the photos were actually taken two years later, in early 1944 ( we even know the name of the crew chief!). The Wespe featured belongs to 9SS PD “Hohenstaufen” which was only formed at the end of December 1942 and which received its Wespes late in 1943/ early in 1944. So we know that they are in Dunkelgelb with brown and/or green overspray. This also brings into question the schemes on the same page (page 26). The Hummels are likewise from “Hohenstaufen”, unloading on its transfer to the East in April 1944, so that caption is also wrong. What also makes it difficult to guess at colours from black and white photos is where they are very “contrasty”, especially where snow is around, it makes Dunkelgelb look darker than it really is. For example a whitewashed Dunkelgelb vehicle with tactical numbers left outlined in the base colour - the background looks much darker by contrast. Best to start with the production range of the vehicle concerned and ascertain what is likely or possible. I’m not actually sure I believe in the grey/green vehicles. Where did the green come from? Was it a Luftwaffe colour? The issuing of vehicles in the new Dunkelgelb from February 1943 was accompanied by issue of the three main colours, Dunkelgelb, red brown and green in paste form to apply camouflage. IMHO the most likely combination on an existing vehicle would be grey and Dunkelgelb, if the paint was in short supply and applied for contrast, but this Stug isn’t in this scheme, the contrast would be much more apparent. It could just be mud, smeared on to break up the shape. Dating the photo is important. No one seems to have mentioned the prominent unit device on the front, which should provide information on where and when it is. I don’t know myself which unit this is, 347ID used a windmill device, but it looks slightly different. Any suggestions?
Agreed to the probabilities and possibilities, but the StuG in question is an F version in winter. Which most probably places it in the winter of '42 -'43, in which case the base color would certainly (bar exceptions) be dark gray. The overspray could be green, or brown.
Thirty seven “Tropen”-painted Tigers were sent to the Eastern Front in that same winter, ‘42-’43. And other kinds of vehicle too. Dunkelgrau was the official paint, yes - for some theaters. But Tropical paint was being used in the southern Ostfront also.
This is some Tigers and Befehlswagen of “Grossdeutschland” in the snow. They are all painted “Tropen” in my opinion. And the pale patch, where the number “02” was repainted, is I believe RAL8020. In other words, the unit was supplied with cans of the latest “Tropen” paint as well as pre-painted “Tropen” vehicles. Unfortunately they didn’t match.
Remember that units were issued paint as cans of paste concentrate, and were supposed to dilute it with gasoline before applying it to the vehicles (ideally with the spray equipment issued to the units, but we know how fast that goes in the trash); that’s why there was such a range of shades in different units, and sometimes within a single unit — differences in how the paste was thinned and what it was thinned with could significantly change the resulting color.
“Thinning” a paint generally implies that it won’t give you a solid colour. Rather, the underlying colour will partially show through. It’s useful for achieving “soft” edges.
I don’t think that “thinner” could take a dark colour, such as these vehicles were painted with, and turn it into a lighter colour.
You’re misunderstanding; the paints weren’t issued in cans of paint the way you would buy it from a store, where you can just open the can and use it. They were issued as paste — concentrated pigments that had to be thinned to a normal paint consistency before they could be sprayed or brushed on. Imagine getting a can of something the consistency of peanut butter.
When the Olivgrun and Rotbraun colors were issued to units for field application of camouflage, depending on how the pastes were thinned, the green could be anything from a pea green to a dark olive green, and the brown anywhere from a brick red to a chocolate brown. The same would be true for other pastes issued for repainting vehicles; as long as a unit had the supplies and time to do it properly, the results would be consistent. But if rushed, or done without proper supplies, the results would be varied.
