Need help on what color the interior was ? Thanks
A light buff – sort of a brownish off-white. Easy to fake, just lighten some tan with white.
IIRC, all enclosed German armor was a variation on this buff color, except for the parts that would be exposed when open, like hatches.
A little cut and paste job here;
“Within the upper, Ivory part of the interior, all items of what I would call “working machinery” were painted black. This includes MG mounts, movable handles, vision ports, gearboxes and handwheels, etc. Also, it seems that every equipment stowage point was labelled, by hand or later with decals. In both cases the writing was black and had no background.
In September 1944, an order went out to stop using the Ivory paint and leave the tanks entirely red inside. This seems like sheer idiocy, but there are surviving Panthers and Hetzers with 100% red interiors. Other simplifications were being made to tank manufacture at the same time - Zimmeritt was discontinued, for example. There were loud complaints, and at the very end of 1944 the Ivory paint was officially reinstated.”
SdKfz 234/2 were built between Sept. of 1943 through Sept. of 1944. There is a chance that some were built near the beginning of the roughly 4 month period where everything inside was left in Red Oxide Primer. The SdKfz 234/4 at Panzermuseum Munster, though it is an open-topped vehicle, has a mainly Red Oxide Primer interior, with only the gun mount, shield and upper interior walls painted in dark yellow. Several of the other late war vehicles that I could poke my head into at Panzermuseum Munster and the Wehrtechnische Museum at Koblenz had a lot of Red Oxide Primer and Gray-Green parts in the interiors.
I agree…basically the interiors were painted in the same manner as other AFV’s…any hatch that opened outward was also painted in the outside base color for camo purposes…I just finished the 234/1 and left the interior of the hull in red oxide, with the interior of the turret in dark yellow…
agree
Thank you very much. Just the info I was looking for. Greatly appreciated.[:D]
Do you think they would have won the war if they continued to use ivory interior in their armor? Hah! hah! joke!
Before they went to Red Oxide (at least on tigers) the bottom of the hull was red oxide or was painted a light green from the sponsons up including the Turret was elfenbein. While sites mg, and optics were painted black. The inside of the hatches was painted Dunkelgelb to match the exterior.
Of course this was different on open top vehicles such as the Sd.Kfz. 251 which had an interior painted the base color of the outdide of the halftrack.
HTH,
Mark