http://www.businessinsider.com/us-tanks-in-europe-painted-with-green-paint-for-camouflage-2017-4
Interesting. I didn’t realise they had been painting all there tanks for the desert. I thought they would have just painted them as needs must.
I wonder if they will have camo colors,or is that it.
The vehicle in the video would make an interesting model. It has the desert tan running gear, green hull, and camo netting.
The paint used is a temporary, water-based paint being applied by the crews when deployed to Europe as part of a rotational force. The green paint is washed off and the tanks returned to sand when the unit redeploys back to the US.
Water based? Does it wash off in the rain?
The camo netting almost gives it a 3-color NATO scheme look to it. Love those tanks in green. In fact, I did a TUSK abrams and gave it some NATO green elements (mudguards, fume extractor, a couple of the road wheels).
Solid green? Like the early 80’s M1s between MERDC and NATO Tri color?
Yep that’s cool Got a blend in. The dark gray German ww2 camo didn’t make much sense to me. I just figured it was to blend in the dark forest of the area.
Then I read it was done to park in the shadows of city’s to avoid aircraft
Not sure why they when to dark yellow Russian step maybe. But that’s the same with desert color m1 just don’t blend with heavy green forest area.
I know this a m1 post but if anyone knows why German used there colors I would like to hear about it.
So far it’s just green. And it’s not all over; the undercarriage (wheels and lower hull) is still the desert yellow, just for sake of expediency. Also, they’re not repainting the unit markings, just masking them off and doing a quick overspray of green. So when they remove the mask, the numbers, etc. are still black on desert yellow (I work on a US Army base, so I see this stuff every day).
Here’s a link showing one of the tanks on my base that has recently been repainted: https://www.dvidshub.net/video/518842/m1-abrams-tank-crew
You can see the road wheels are still desert yellow; harder to see are the bottom of the hull and the sides of the hull inside the wheels, but they are also still desert yellow.
Armor, you work at Graf?
The gray/brown and later all gray was used ostensibly to hide the vehicles in the shadows of trees and what not when parked. It was not optimum in the western desert, so other colors (tropen) were developed for the Mediterranean area.
Rolling through the steppes (plains) of Russia the crews noticed the tanks became covered in the yellow dust/pollen of the area. That, and vast areas devoid of trees, prompted the dark yellow base color with the red brown/dark green added as required.
Yep, sure do work at Graf! Been here seven years…
I’ve never been thru there myself but have heard many tales. I have been thru NTC and CMTC though several times each,… amongst other places…
My son just left Vilseck several months ago. Went back to Huachuca.
I spent a week at the base at Grafenwoehr, must have been late 90’s, on the M2 simulators, this was before the British army got our own. Couldn’t believe the facilities they have on those bases, especially compared to ours.
As an Army tanker in Germany (Dec 87 to Dec 90), Graf and Hohenfels were our second home. Although sometimes it seemed like we spent more time there than at home. I was a single officer so after gunnery, the battalion would bus all the married soldiers back to Mannheim (often called a “hard ___ run”) so they would not be eligible for the $30 family separation allowance that the Army paid married folks for being apart from their loved ones for over 30 days straight. They’d take the bus one day and return the next.
Single soldiers and officers would guard the vehicles at Graf until the battalion returned and then we’d road march to Hohenfels for another several weeks.
Graf! After RVN was with 6/9 in Giessen 1970 and did the Graf thing twice. Saw some you tubes from a guy that revisited the area
Frankenpanzer…thank you. hiding there armor in the shadows of buildings from aircraft seemed a bit limited to base your armor color on.