I just found this, maybe it’s old news, but I post it anyway.
During the Warsaw rising in '44 the polish insurgents captured a Hezter, namned it “Chwat” and put in in action. One of its road wheels obviosly survived the war and can be seen in its original painting. Maybe useful as a paint reference? My first impression is that the colors are very bright.
/Tony
Very very cool. Thanks for posting the images.
The story is that during the General Uprising of 1944 Chwat was being used in the defense of the Post Office. It was firing from inside the building and the building collapsed upon it. After the war they did find it in the rubble. Maybe more of it would have been saved except for the Cold War influences that were present in the late 1940’s. The communist underground was not part of the Polish Home Army.
Mike T.
I agree on the colors. Even through all that grime the green is more of a pine treen or evergreen color than the “Olivgrun” (spelling?) that many modelers use.
That squares pretty well with the magnificent StuG III saukopf in original livery at the Patton Museum in Fort Knox. I was surprised at how “pretty” the colors were-very bright, actually!
Snyggt Bulten!
Good luck in the GB 
Larsa
…I think we have to assume that the colors “changed” to some degree over time: oxidation, chemical breakdown, fading, etc…that may account for the almost neon green…
[#ditto]
Didn’t really think about tha. You’re probably right though, who knows what 60 years can do to some of that stuff? Especially the conditions they were in.
…the more I have studied the pics…the more I wonder if the “green” and “red-brown” marks are actually even paint !!!
…in a way, the green looks like it might actually be mildew or mold of some sort, and the red-brown possibly rust…one indication of this is the back of the wheel…if you look closely you can see small spots of the same colors…I doubt that the back of the wheels would have been painted with camo colors…
…of course this is all speculation…
Looks a lot like Tamiya Dark Green and Red Brown to me anyway.
a beautiful artifact!-- if indeed it has never been repainted, we must take it for what it is-- a very good representation of one ‘variation’ of the colors of the day-- tread[:)]
i’d make it into a clock![tup]
…I’d use it as the basis of a scratchbuilt 1:1 scale Hetzer…
This link is to an article that has wartime pictures of the same vehicle. They should help with the camo pattern.
http://www.czolgiem.com/polska/chwat.htm
Mike T.