I know they came with green base caot with dark red and yellow applied over them, and also I know they came all yellow with green and dark red applied over it. Were there any other variations of paint schemes? Did they come in the ambush pattern?
I;m not extremely anal about getting the patterns perfect, but I do like to somewhat accurate to the real thing.
The more I research camo colors for German armor the more I realize there is no “standard”. The closest thing they had to a standard was dictating what color the basecoat was. During the time of the Jagdpanthers, the base coat was dark yellow and then green and or brown were applied in the field by the units themselves. The camo patterns and colors would vary it depending on the local outdoor colors, as well as seasonal variations… spring and summer there was generally more green in the camo, and during the fall more brown.
Towards the end of the war everything was scarce including paint and it was not uncommon for a tank that late in the war to be delivered in dark grey, although I haven’t found anything that indicates that any Jagdpanthers were delivered in grey.
Everything points to dark yellow being the base and some were left in that scheme. In fact, I’m putting the finishing touches on the Tamiya Jagdpanther and did mine with just the yellow basecoat and a heavy oil wash with dark brown pigments.
I think it once again depends on “early” or “late” model JP , early versions would have the typical field app mottled camo so common on most panthers of the time as well as zimmerit , late versions would have more hard edged camos , (but not in all cases) ,no zimmerit , with in some cases as perdexion stated green or red oxide as a base color , with the yellow color being secondary for a change .
There were many experimental camo styles here ,… octopus , ambush ,sometimes even solid ,( yellow , green, red oxide), if it was a very late war machines.
To quote Bruce Culver in Vol 1 of Panzer Colors, “HM 1943, no. 181, dated February 18,1943 ordered the three color system using the dark yellow color as the base color.” The same order directed that any new undelivered/unaccepted equipment painted in the older dark grey would be painted dark yellow before delivery/acceptance. As far as I know all the Jagdpanthers were delivered in the yellow scheme with the greens and browns applied at the unit level.
Peridexian, those are some great diagrams. Do you happen to have more of these diagrams you could post on here? I;m leaning towards the top diagram, or an ambush scheme.
Thanks for all the info everyone, this site is really great.
Cool! Look what I found…
http://bsdi.usppp.com/wwiiscalemodels/schemes/panzertarnung.html
based on this plate:
I went ahead and built this:
Jagdpanthers are cool machines. I made mine after a trip to Aberdeen [}:)]