Help with British Army Uniform Colours

[Courageous]

Technically, I should imagine that this question would be posted elsewhere but seeing that it's about armour diorama, I hope it'll stay here.

 

I am currently painting up an early LWB Land Rover, so 1970ish. and have a couple of figs for it. On dude looks like he's got a jacket, so DPM for that but what about trousers as I've seen green on the BAOR site? The other dude looks like he's in overall's, so colour for that?

Also, I'm currently on a refueler that's being painted for the Iraq War and again I I have one guy that can be painted in the desert camo but his side kick looks like he has dumped his jacket and wears a T-shirt or short-sleeved shirt. What colour would this shirt be?

 

TIA

Stuart

[Scimitar F1]

 Sounds like Lightweights and Coveralls. They would start out a colour similar to the vehicles bit would lighten appreciably.

 

Will

[Bullbasket]

I don't know when these ceased to be current issue, but when I left in '69, we would have been wearing either combat uniform, which was a mid to lightish olive drab colour (which got lighter after a few years wear), or denims, which were again two piece and coloured roughly the same. An olive coloured jumper could also be worn with these, especially in winter. Don't make the mistake of painting any webbing in a webbing colour. Blancoed webbing was only worn with best dress. Ours was painted black and we used to buff it up with boot polish.

HTH's.

 

John.

[Courageous]

2 hours ago, Scimitar F1 said:

Sounds like Lightweights and Coveralls. They would start out a colour similar to the vehicles bit would lighten appreciably.

Thanks Will. So, are you saying that the coveralls in the 70's would be green? Lightweights, are you referring to the shirts and/or non-camo trousers?

2 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

denims,

Cheers for chiming in John. Denims? Webbing, black, check.

 

Stuart

[Scimitar F1]

I may have misread as if you are looking at a pre mid-70s not sure if this will hold. Lightweights (trousers) and Coveralls were made of the same polyester type material and came in at some point in the ‘70s.  
 

 

 

[Courageous]

31 minutes ago, Scimitar F1 said:

I may have misread

Not really Will. The Land Rover build has no date reference as far as the decals/schemes are concerned, it's just an early Land Rover (109 I believe), maybe I should've said 1970's.

 

Stuart

[Bullbasket]

16 hours ago, Courageous said:

Denims?

Yes, I'm sure that's how we referred to them. They were our usual everyday jacket/trousers for working in, around camp. A dark olive drab colour.

 

John.

[ivan-o]

21 hours ago, Courageous said:

Technically, I should imagine that this question would be posted elsewhere but seeing that it's about armour diorama, I hope it'll stay here.

 

I am currently painting up an early LWB Land Rover, so 1970ish. and have a couple of figs for it. On dude looks like he's got a jacket, so DPM for that but what about trousers as I've seen green on the BAOR site? The other dude looks like he's in overall's, so colour for that?

Also, I'm currently on a refueler that's being painted for the Iraq War and again I I have one guy that can be painted in the desert camo but his side kick looks like he has dumped his jacket and wears a T-shirt or short-sleeved shirt. What colour would this shirt be?

 

TIA

Stuart

DPM jacket and lightweight trousers would be the way to go for the 70’s👍 Trousers and coveralls would be a shade of olive green but they faded after washing a few times. I would use interior green and mix in olive drab to get the shade I wanted. T shirt would be a light olive drab usually.

HTH 

Ivan

[ivan-o]

2 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

Yes, I'm sure that's how we referred to them. They were our usual everyday jacket/trousers for working in, around camp. A dark olive drab colour.

 

John.

Oh dear😏 denims a blast from the past😀 we had them in Junior Leaders RE when I joined in 1970 but were withdrawn when we got into our Regiments.

 

Ivan

 

[Courageous]

1 hour ago, ivan-o said:

DPM jacket and lightweight trousers would be the way to go for the 70’s

Thanks Ivan. With yours and others help, I should be able to get these figs painted later.

 

Stuart

[SimonR]

Hi Stuart,

 

This may help in terms of colours, this is an 85 Pattern DPM smock and 1980s Lightweights, not much difference in colour between this and earlier kit.

 

The kit below is based on RAF but same as Army for the period.

 

Cheers

Simon

 

[Dads203]

The kit never actually changed much from the 70’s until the advent of C/S 95 (Combat Soldier 95 issue ) in the mid to late 90’s. Working dress was boots, lightweight trousers, green plastic belt, shirt GS with a jumper and DPM Combat jacket. This was warn in camp with the difference being sleeves up in summer and down in winter. 
After the falklands conflict highleg boots replaced the dms boots with puttees but they were still absolute gash and probably one of the biggest factors of knackered knees- hips- ankles in ex squaddies to date, Truly an awful mistake that the MOD came up with. The insoles issued were like cheese graters ..what were they thinking of? 

 

In the field we swapped the lightweights for DPM trousers and  the green shirt that was about it, private purchase kit such as Norgie shirts, wind proof smocks would be normally allowed for exercise depending on how the badge viewed non issue kit. 

 

Combat Soldier 95 did away with the green lightweights and we had a new issue DPM trousers and shirt for around camp and in the field, much more fast drying and light weight - altogether much better kit than what we were issued before. We also had the new webbing and sleeping system that replaced the 58 pattern crap that we had make do with before. 

[Phil Evans]

Don't forget KF Shirts in the 70s/80s.

[Dads203]

8 minutes ago, Phil Evans said:

Don't forget KF Shirts in the 70s/80s.

Khaki itchy shirts  new issue from stores would always be shaved with a new razor blade to make them less itchy 

[Courageous]

13 hours ago, SimonR said:

The kit below is based on RAF but same as Army for the period.

Thanks for the pic Simon, much appreciated. Painted a figure last night before I saw this pic and it looks like the only thing I forgot about were the bl**dy putties, soon fix that.

12 hours ago, Dads203 said:

green plastic belt

Cheers Dan but we seem to have a conflict of information? According to John @Bullbasket, belts were black.

 

Stuart

[ivan-o]

2 hours ago, Courageous said:

Thanks for the pic Simon, much appreciated. Painted a figure last night before I saw this pic and it looks like the only thing I forgot about were the bl**dy putties, soon fix that.

Cheers Dan but we seem to have a conflict of information? According to John @Bullbasket, belts were black.

 

Stuart

As Dan says if you didn’t have a spare 58 pattern belt it was your green plastic one that also doubled up as your best belt when they got rid of the 37 pattern one (blanco’d). During shirt sleeve order you could wear your stable  belt as well.

[Dads203]

1 hour ago, Courageous said:

Thanks for the pic Simon, much appreciated. Painted a figure last night before I saw this pic and it looks like the only thing I forgot about were the bl**dy putties, soon fix that.

Cheers Dan but we seem to have a conflict of information? According to John @Bullbasket, belts were black.

 

Stuart

Black leather belts were issued to Royal Signals Driver lineman so John @Bullbasket might of been a Liney so that would be correct. I’m not aware of any other Regt or Corps being issued black belts but it’s not to say they weren’t but it wouldn’t of been common. We used the rather rubbish green plastic belt on trousers or a Stable Belt if in shirt sleeve order and a 58 pattern web belt to go around your smock ….Dunno why a belt around your smock or jumper as in the 12 years of serving I’ve never personally had my jumper or combat smock fall down ! 

 

 

[simmerit]

Two tone lightweights and shirts scratchy. Kids today don’t know what they were missing!

[Bullbasket]

On 30/11/2021 at 12:05, Dads203 said:

John @Bullbasket might of been a Liney

How dare you!! Me, a hairy a***d lineman!! I'll have you know that I was a communication centre operator, or comcen op for short.

Actually, both Dan and myself are right, because we served at completely different times. I was in Germany from 64-67. Our belts were of the webbing variety, not leather, but they were painted black when issued to us. As I stated, we cleaned them by brushing with black boot polish. 

 

John.

[Alfisti]

I was stationed in BAOR with an armoured regiment,initially on Saladin,then Scorpion,and DPM gear was issued in 1972.It was supposed to be specialist cleaned,but inevitibly got put in with the regular 'dhobi',and consequently became very faded after a short time.It wasn't unusual to see DPM jackets worn with Khaki/OD trousers,or even over coveralls.On exercise there was a bit of leeway with what kit was worn,unless the RSM saw you.Some of the guys even had the old 'Pixie' suits,a much coveted bit of gear.Also,the regiment I was in never had putties or gaiters,either issued or worn.

 

Dave.

Edited December 3, 2021 by Alfisti

[Courageous]

2 hours ago, Alfisti said:

leeway

Thanks for the info Dave, can never have too much intel and I love 'leeway'.

 

Stuart