Just as the title says, what color were the engines of a tiger II painted? I’m building Trumpeter’s “Geschutzwagen Tiger fur 17cm Kanone 72” kit and it has a nice interior including the gear box and engine. The engine is a kit all in itself. This thing is “BIG”!!! While I’m at it wht color should the interior be? I was leaning more towards red oxide in the driver and engine compartments and not sure about the back where the gun is? I know vehicles like the 251’s an earlier self propelled guns were the same color as the outer hull, but not sure about a late vehicle such as this. Thanks for all your help.
Here is an Maybach HL 230 P 30 engine;
It was most likely painted in gray-green.
That is most certainly a restored engine so the colors are not original…What I have read about and seen depicted most is a medium green color for the engine block…
I realize this is restored, but I would hope Mr Littlefield was paying some sort of attention to detail when he repainted it, though I’m not disputing the Gray-Green color on most Panzer parts. Let me see if I have a photo of one that has not been restored to compare.
OK…Mr Littlefield may have taken some liberties with the paint scheme here…or not.
For those who wish for the Gray-Green scheme, try these out for size;
http://news.webshots.com/album/559143852NNvHjL
Although these too have been restored.
The August 25th, 1944 moratorium on multi-colored Panzer interior parts, (see Jentz, Germany’s Panther Tank, The Quest for Combat Supremacy, page 91) may have some bearing on this. Perhaps engines built after this date were no longer painted Grey-Green? I don’t know. Engines could have also been stock-piled, so that even at a later date, they may have still been some found painted in Grey-Green. As I said above, I really hope Mr Littlefield wasn’t just hallucinating about his choice in paint schemes here. His meticulous Panther A restoration doesn’t lead one to believe he would be so careless.
Just as a third option, here is a shot of Bovington’s;
This seems to be more the blue-gray shade. Anyone have a RAL number on this? Or is it just the lighting…film bias…white balance…tilt of the earth…
Yet another;
Pea Green?
Will the real Maybach HL 230 P 30 please stand up?
Either we have some issues here with restoration color standards or these came in a variety of colors. Wanna bet I can find another? [:-^]
I agree that Gray-Green would be the most likely, but if you Google images of this and other Maybach engines of this series, you will see that even in the black and white photos, some of the engines appear to have multi-colored parts.
Are you guys sure that the Tiger II does not use the engine below ?
[:D]
Ben
I’m always amazed at the knowledge and resources available through this forum! Gotta renew my FSM 'scrip just to keep my forum access available!!!
NO way, man–that’s a Maybach Triple-Barrel Hemi 488mm with Double-Ought Neblewerfer Muffin Launchers and fuel injected nitrous!
Slap one of these into a Tiger II and she’ll turn a 10.2 at 130 mph on a quarter mile! [(-D]
Ok, the inital engine installed in the E-100 chassis that was cptured by the British army was the normal Tiger B engine HL230P30 fitted to a Olvar transmission. The final version, from which the Geschutzwagen Tiger fur 17cm Kanone 72 would have been built, was to have the HL234 engine with the Mekydro transmission.
Don’t know if this throws a wrench[(-D] in the discussion, but this comes from the ’ Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two’ by Peter Chamberlian and Hilary L. Doyle.
Thanks guys for all the info. I had no idea that there was that many different colors. I guess that I’ll just look to see what color paint I have that matches one the choices and go from there.Thanks again, the pics are exactly what I was looking for.