Microbacchus

Hi everyone! A very interesting topic😀 I just stumbled on this colour photo, that might help identifying paint layers on Michael. “June 1942. Army tank driver at Fort Knox, Kentucky. 4×5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information” I guess it is some kind of primer and not OD: 1. It is glossy 2. The Lee seems unfinished (rivets are partially painted, the visor window and its rod are unpainted) 3. There are visible runoffs around the window, so it might even be a thick hand painted layer 4. This vibrant green paint was present near the red primer on Cobra King (I can’t find the link to its restoration photos). What are Your thoughts? Is it any help to rule out any green paint layers on US supplied vehicles? Like KG3 finish pre-land lease.

Thanks for the help!:) I checked both the book You mentioned and AK's Real Colours Aircraft but so many colours are close to one another:) Maybe we will never know it, unless it is documented somewhere. I found (and uploaded to the album) a couple more pictures from the LIFE series. There are at least two different colours on these vehicles (not on the Jeeps). To my eyes, the darker one looks like Middle Stone/Light Stone/Desert Pink ZI and the ligher one might be Portland Stone, just guessing. I checked Middle Stone, on the chips and colour photos in the books and it is rather dark. However, I found a good quality Spitfire photo (also uploaded to the album) that shows Middle Stone much lighter than the books.

Hi everyone! LIFE magazine made some really nice and high-resolution colour photos during WW2. Among these, I've found a very interesting series of US Jeeps in sand colour: Photo album (unfortunately I only have the lower resolution photos found on various websites). During my attempt to identify this colour, I only found a Jeep specific forum discussing the topic, but no one had any real clue what this sand colour could be. Maybe here we can identify it:) On the last two pictures in the album there are no Jeeps, however I think they might be from the same series. Thanks!

Hi Everyone, Thanks for the many answers! I’m mostly into British used US made vehicles, but I tried to find some other examples. So it seems that it is not specific to application over US OD. IWM E17100; E17110 Crusader tanks (1942 September 20) with the same, winter whitewash-like wear pattern. E11092 April 1942; heavy chipping combined with some abrasion, that washed down looking erosion is also started to appear at some points, though quiet minimally. E19924 Humber armoured car (1942 November, so might be Desert Pink), the wear pattern is the same as on Stuarts/Grants/Shermans. E16861 It’s a Sherman II but the picture was taken as early as September 15th 1942 (so it must be Light Stone and not Desert Pink), regardless the paint already started to wear off. These tanks surely arrived in factory condition US OD and were repainted in depots and not in the field. Almost all the vehicles in Caunter Scheme I’ve yet seen are in good condition paint-wise (some links: E2872; E380; https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235052137-rolls-royce-armoured-car/ note how minor is the paint damage even on the destroyed one). Mostly just small chips, no abrasion damage or washed down looking areas. But it’s worth mentioning that I’ve studied far less photos from this CS period, so any badly worn-down CS paintwork can prove me wrong, maybe I just failed to find those images yet. Light Mud only started to appear in 1943, so it is not an issue if we are into 1942 vehicles. I found it a very durable finish (at least on Shermans), with minimal paint damage (numerous 1943 era photos of very dirty and packed up Sherman IIIs in Sicily/Italy without any paint issues; IWM NA7861; NA8276, etc.), even on this high-res colour picture (https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/color-photos-from-second-world-war/) and also in the colour parade video from 1943. In early 1944 some Sherman IIIs show extensive abrasion damage, but I think that was intentional – in the lush green vegetation Light Mud was not an ideal colour (NA8276), so I guess some units tried to wear the paint down to the US OD (for example: NA10707 note that the Light Mud paint is intact around the T-number).

Thanks for the kind words! I posted these observations to ask others if they agree on these or not. I'm still unsure if these are real differences among the 3 paint finishes. I also failed to link IWM webpage (https://www.iwm.org.uk/search/global?query=e3467), where anyone can check the photos (simply just search for the catalogue codes, like E3467).

Hi Everyone, We all know that the use of BSC No. 61 Light Stone overlapped with BSC No. 64 Portland Stone usage in late 1941/early 1942 and with Desert Pink ZI in late 1942. Therefore, it is almost impossible to judge a specific vehicle’s base colour from these periods. I don’t believe at all, that we can rely on value (light/dark) differences on B/W photos to tell these colours apart. IWM E18972 is a good demonstration of how futile (in general) this approach is. One can even barely see the black disruptive colour on the tank in the background due to lighting conditions. Now imagine our chances with 3 light colours… Most of the books sold for model makers are inaccurate, and the better, well documented ones are often out of print and impossible to find. These latter ones rely on well documented research from primary sources but even with the help of these books, it can be difficult to judge the base colour of a specific vehicle from an eye-catching photo. As a model maker I study lots and lots of archive photos to visualize the desired paint finish of the subject – sheen of the surface, amount of chipping, type of the chips, amount of dust/mud, type of dirt, fuel stains, etc. During this process, I might have found – accidentally – a way to discriminate BSC No. 61 Light Stone. This paint seems to wear off in a very special way, almost like a winter whitewash, but it’s better if I demonstrate it with the photos themselves. First, I discovered it on some 1942 November Stuarts (E19893; E19936), then on earlier ones (E15489; E14119; from 1:55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJNFueHIXbg&t=182s&ab_channel=PANZERInsight). But found the same wear pattern on M3 Grants (E8580; E9892; E12637; E12860; E13773; 13380; E16711; E18393; E18405; E19350), El Alamein era Sherman IIs (E17966; E18376; E18377; E18707; E18993; E21499) and on various other types of vehicles. These vehicles are almost surely base coated in BSC No. 61 Light Stone. Let’s compare these to BSC No. 64 Portland Stone Stuarts that took part in Op. Crusader. These tanks arrived in US Olive Drab (E3443E; E3450E; etc. mid-August), and they were repainted in Caunter Scheme by late August (E3467; E3469E; E3476; E5086). The paint is in relatively good condition even on the destroyed ones (E7044; Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-783-0107-14A / Dorsen / CC-BY-SA 3.0; etc.) in December 1941. In contrast, E7008 (1941.12.10.) is in a single colour scheme and the wear of the paint is extreme, almost like a winter whitewash, so I assume it must be Light Stone – the wear pattern is like on the Stuarts/Grants/Shermans I mentioned above. Note that this vehicle must be newer than the Caunter Scheme ones and all photos were taken in December 1941. Also, all these tanks were originally US OD. I couldn’t find a big enough pool of vehicles in Desert Pink ZI over US OD, but the paint on the few I could study was in good condition (7th Sherman III in that 1943 Parade for example; original colour video). I don’t know if this observation can be generalized or even if it is a valid distinction between Light Stone and Portland Stone (no idea about Desert Pink yet), but it might be a useful tool to identify Light Stone base coat if proven to be correct. Thanks for Your help!