Typically, what would the base color of a Pz IV G in 1943 under the white wash? Gray?
It could be either Dark Gray, or Dark Yellow. A 3rd possibility would be Desert Brown. Dark Yellows “official” usage began in Feb 43. But supposedly some factories may have begun usage earlier as supplies of the new color became available. The Desert Brown would come from a vehcile originally earmarked for Africa being diverted to the Eastern Front instead. But Dark Gray has the highest probabilty in the early 1943 winter Stalingrad-Kharkov time frame.
If it were a G assigned to the 1st SS Panzerkorps during that timeframe I would opt for the ochre base…all G’s that I have seen during the Battle of Kharkov (Feb/Mar '43) had a dark yellow base with a factory-applied whitewash…
Thanks. It is a Kharkov G I iwll be doing so dk yellow it is.
Cool! I’ll be keeping an eye on this build! I almost did my Kharkov G with a dunkelgelb finish but opted for gray.
Manny I just noticed the end of your statement. Ifthe wahitewash was factory applied… was this a better quality paint the would resist, or negate, heavily worn, peeling white wash?
An interesting comment concerning German vehicle colors of this period, (from which I am guessing Manny based his statement) is to be found on page 4 of The Battle of Kharkov, by Jean Restayn:
…“Besides that, from the summer and fall of 1942 on, practically all new vehicles were delivered to the front in dunklegelb.”
This sets back the normally assumed time frame of the implementation of Army Directive HM 1942, Number 18, namely that all vehicles were to be painted in a base coat of dunklegelb, starting on February 18th, 1943.
Another interesting comment on this page describes the possiblity that some formations might have been using a 5-color scheme of “panzergrau, dunklegelb, braun, olivegrun and weiss.”
The whitewash was normally made from Calcium Hydroxide, (Quick-Lime) and was intended to be easily removed with water and a scrub brush, just in case weather conditions changed rapidly and the whitewash needed to be removed in a hurry. No one wanted to be stuck in a white vehicle in a field now covered with mud instead of snow.
Great question. My research of this battle has been rather heavy and all of the pic evidence I have seen of the Mk IV’s indicate that the whitewash was much neater and wear resistant than field-applied…
Great pics manny… thanks. Guess I am gonna have to “pretend” it was field applied, like kykeom suggests it could have been anyway. Thanks for those line fromthe book. I want to do a little peeling. Just can’t stop using all these new techniques I am learning[:P]
The bottom pic of 205 has something wrapped around the muzzle break. Ya think that 's to keep out snow and other FOD like the red tape on a Spit?
The weight of my refs/research still have me in the belief that Feb '43 was when dunkelgelb became the standard base (there are written documents/orders/directives to back that up). However, there is a lot of info buzzing around right now that there was indeed something weird going on during the '42 time frame to suggest that some other colors may have indeed supplemented panzer grey as the primary color of German AFV’s. Many refs acknowledge that tanks could be seen in Southern Russia in Africa brown. This has been attributed to tanks earmarked for the African theatre shipped to Russia as emergency replacements. Other sources indicate that green or brown may have been sprayed over the dark grey in a disruptive pattern. But recently I read an article that suggests some other colors, such as grey-green!!!, may have been heavily used as well. The source indicates that these colors may have been Luftwaffe colors or perhaps even captured Russian stocks. If you ever look at a B & W pic during the German Southern Campaign in '42, you certainly can find some interesting shades/tones…
As far as your tank, feel free to chip away…You can see some wear on the pics I posted around edges, hatches, etc…the yellow seems to “bleed through” the white more than anything, not really “chip” per say…whitewash was such a thin paint that it probably never really chipped more than it dissolved (from rain) or was rubbed down by friction…