German grey for Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf D

[ModellerMatt]

Hi folks,

 

Just about to start work on my first bit of German WW2 armour (Pz.Kpfw IV Ausf D) but have no idea which "German grey" is the right German grey.  Any ideas?

 

Many thanks! 

[Kingsman]

Now that is a can of Worms, Wriggly, No1 Mk1...............  or should that be Ausf A 1-serie.......

 

Your biggest problem is not identifying the original colour but the fact that every paint manufacturer makes a different shade.  And beware Luftwaffe greys, which were different.    The official shade was RAL7021 Schwarzgrau: same colour today as it was in WW2, although it was called Dunkelgrau then.  But many companies claim to make that. 

 

Do you want enamel or acrylic?  In enamel I would lean towards Colourcoats ARG10 as Jamie does good research. 

 

In acrylics the choice is huge.  If you search for RAL7021 you will find a huge range of slightly different colour swatches from different sources, even from "official" ones.  And what our individual monitors display and our eyes see will be different according to various factors.  So a colour within the range of what that search reveals will be fine.  But look for one that claims to be RAL7021 rather than just generic "German grey", "Panzer grey" or similar descriptions.

 

Vallejo have a 7021 primer.  AK Interactive, Lifecolor, Vallejo and MiG all claim a 7021 colour match. 

 

If you're into modulation then AK Interactive have a whole "Panzer Grey" modulation paint set, but German paints were pre-faded or used non-fading pigments so they wouldn't fade in use.

[Nenad Ilijic]

RAL7021 is one of the rare colors where I haven't found a brand that is way off, which is the case with many other colors. They are all a bit different shade, but are acceptable, at least IMO and at least brands that I were using (Gunze, MRP, Tamiya, Mission Models, Hataka). If you prefer lacquers, I recommend Gunze and MRP.

[ModellerMatt]

I now have a better idea of what i'm looking for, didn't think grey was going to stump me quite like it had, but the answers are brilliant, thank you very much both!

[Troy Smith]

On 19/12/2020 at 04:59, Das Abteilung said:

The official shade was RAL7021 Schwarzgrau: same colour today as it was in WW2, although it was called Dunkelgrau then.  But many companies claim to make that. 

Not hand,  but I bought a RAL K7 deck from here 

 

https://www.e-paint.co.uk/Ral_colour_guides.asp

 

Doesn't have the RAL for dunkelgelb thorough, but IIRC the RAL WW2 German panzer red brown and dark green,.  As well as other RAL codes from the era.   @Das AbteilungAbteilung maybe to advise more.

 

 

[KRK4m]

Being terribly conservative, I still use enamels and brushes, so my pick for RAL7021 in 1:35 would be "something very close to" Humbrol 67 with a bit of blue .

In the Braille scale, however, the Humbrol 27 straight out of the can looks quite convincing.

Cheers

Michael

[Asmodai]

Something else to be aware of - a lot of kit instructions erroneously cite only gray as the color of early WW2 german vehicles. The actual army paint scheme was officially 2/3 of the vehicle gray, and 1/3 brown from 1937 until roughly the end of the French campaign. This is when overall gray was ordered. It’s not readily apparent in period photographs, as the contrast between the two was minimal at best. Especially in black and white photos of dirty, dusty vehicles. Of course, not all units fully complied with this. See here for a start on this subject - https://panzerworld.com/german-armor-camouflage#early-war

 

At one time, I had a Tristar 1/35 Panzer I painted in the two color scheme. Unless the room was well lit and you were observing the model closely, you wouldn’t notice the two different colors. At a distance, one would just have said it was gray. 

[Longbow]

Don’t over think it. 
German “Panzer Grey” was almost black in color, fresh off the factory floor. 

 

Here’s some color pix. 
 

http://wio.ru/tank/color/pz3.htm

[Kingsman]

German DUNKELGRAU was RAL 7021 fresh off the factory floor.  At that time it was called dark grey but today RAL7021 is called black grey, schwarzgrau.  It was never called panzergrau: that's a name we modellers have given it.  But both names do very clearly imply that it was a dark shade of grey.

 

Dunkelgrau + Schokobraun would be theoretically appropriate for a Pz IVD in France, but good luck proving it conclusively.  Very hard to see in period pictures, as noted above.

 

Because of the nature of film stock of the WW2 period there will be either too much blue or green in those colour images, and the lighting is variable.  And that's before we get down to colour changes through scanning and screen rendering.  No image seen on any screen, even direct digital images, will ever be exactly the same as seen with the naked eye.

 

Thinking - rather than over-thinking - about colour is why we used to be happy in times past with a palette of less than 100 Humbrol enamel generic colours not matched to anything, with people like Mike Starmer doing their best to mix up realistic matches to actual colours for the benefit of the rest of us.  Yet now we have many hundreds of different generic and matched colours, thousands if you include all the dozens of brand variations.  Because we realised that "close enough" was not close enough, and inevitably spawned a whole new world of arguments about colour/shade exactitude.  And here we are.............  My paint stash is over 1,800 pots now, although there are brand duplications of the same colour/shade.  And there are a couple of hundred Warhammer.

 

With RAL colours we are lucky that they still exist in their period form today: current RAL 7021 is the same as WW2 7021.  As do BS colours: current BS361 is the same as WW2  BS61, for example.  FS of course came much later, so matching WW2 US colours remains the subject of debate.

 

But on-screen rendering and paint batch production still vary to this day with computerised colour matching and ingredient control, so they certainly varied in WW2 when everything was done by eye and by hand.  Hence why if you look up RAL7021 online you will find a range of shades, and why I said back at the top that somewhere in that range will be fine.

 

I have recently had conversations with people painting preserved UK and German 1:1 scale WW2 AFV.  In both cases they tried several different brands all claiming to be the appropriate RAL or BS colour, and all were visibly noticeably different out of the can.  So a decision had to be made by eye about which "looked right".  And if that is still the case today then it was certainly the case in WW2.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Das Abteilung
Bad spelling!

[f matthews]

The most important thing to get right if you want the actual/accurate colour grey-DO NOT USE BLUE!

 

[Longbow]

Interesting video for you

 

 

[Cometracer]

Quite a presentation and rather thorough.  It's interesting to see how the newer paints better replicate the colour leaving the older enamel paints trailing.  Thanks!

[The Great Escape]

It’s brilliant that we spend ages trying to get the colour right... then we chip it, weather it, cover it in grime and coat it in mud!

[M3talpig]

Take every Panzer that was ever painted in the grey paint and line them all up together and you will find there is not two the same ....same for the olive drab used on the Shermans no two will be the same .......find something that looks roughly correct and go with it ...by the time the weathering is done it won't be relevant anyway. and have fun. Anybody tells you it's wrong is just being a rivet counting bore. 

[Graham Boak]

Lazy thinking.  Every one of these, Panzer or Sherman, came out of a paint shop with exactly the same paint as its near neighbours on the line.  So if you wanted to do a "factory fresh" model, as some do, then you have to go with a factory shade.  If different factories used different paints,  as seems most likely in the US (as this is certainly true of OD on US aircraft), then you may want to look for more information on which factory used which shade, and just where your subject was built.  Now once your subject gets into service, and you want to model it "used", then there's a whole string of other factors to consider, and there would be very few cases on adjacent tanks looking identical.  But that's not the same as being completely different.  As for telling stories about the problems of modern restorers attempting to match colours from an enormous range of possible producers, this is a problem of wealth.  Ask yourself just how many paint producers there were in Germany, at this time a siege economy with highly restricted access to resources, and just how many variations they would be even capable of producing.  Surely not none, but much much less.

 

You want to ignore all these factors, go ahead, it's your model.  Not his.  You want to insult modellers with a different approach to yourself, go ahead, but consider that it weakens your argument not strengthens it.

[M3talpig]

7 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

You want to ignore all these factors, go ahead, it's your model.  Not his.  You want to insult modellers with a different approach to yourself, go ahead, but consider that it weakens your argument not strengthens it.

He asked for an opinion i gave mine as a model maker......as you say if he is doing a model as seen fresh from the factory and unused in combat then probably better to get as close as you can to the original paint ...but if it's a combat veteran then this argument is pointless and if my comment hit a nerve with you ...tough that's your problem not mine. 

[Mike Starmer]

As do BS colours: current BS361 is the same as WW2  BS61, for example.   May I point out, yet again, that BS.381 No 361 Light Stone is NOT the same colour as BS.61 Light Stone.  No.61 was withdrawn in 1948 and replaced by an entirely different colour No.361 of the same name.  BS.361 Light Stone is nearest matched by Humbrol No.93 whereas No.61 is slightly darker than Humbrol No.74, (yellow).

[Bozothenutter]

RAL today is NOT the same as it was is WW2.

It changed around some numbers in (I think 1953).

A good example is 1001 aka 'elfenbein', aka 'interior white for german tanks'

If you use the current RAL chart you'll end up with beige interiors, not ivory.

You need the RAL 840R set for WW2.

[Peter Browne]

Well yes, modelling, the never ending quest for the Holly Grail...

 

 

Edited February 19, 2021 by pbrowne

[Bozothenutter]

6 hours ago, pbrowne said:

Well yes, the Holy Grail...

 

 

You don't need that Grail, you need this one, it has much better bla bla bla nla

🤣🤣🤣