Copyright 2006 T. Sheil & A. Sheil All Rights Reserved
Our neighborhood hobby shop stayed in business by selling droves of ROCO Minitanks. Back then, a standard tank case 25 cents. A quarter bought a Sherman, Panzer 4. Panther, Stalin, or the early crude version of the M47 and M48.
One day, the shop displayed several painted Minitanks in camouflage patterns. They looked great. Even better, the shop owner was willing to show us how to do it. All it took was dis-assembling the model, painting it a base color ,and then adding a pattern. Al the colors were in a set of Testors Military Flats. For the price of the paints, a fellow could have a nicely-painted fleet of little tanks.
Knowing what I do now, I doubt our little tanks would have been hard to spot. Our appreciation of camouflage was limited. We only saw a nice set of swiggly colors. It was not until much later that I came to appreciate and study the fine art of concealment.
The art of camouflage is more than paint schemes. Concealment is also about movement and working with natural terrain. It is a game of shadows and silhouettes and shapes. A paint job is the least part of it.
Our eyes see things in this order: motion, color and shape. We notice movement first. If we were looking down on a field, we would notice the running man first. Next we would notice the man in the red suit. Last we would notice the man in earth-colored clothes because his shape would give him away.
We can use color to help disguise a shape. In fact, two tenets of camouflage are blending with color and breaking up a shape.
Here is an example. The truck is painted with a dark swiggle of color. The pattern is irregular. Instead of following the truck’s contours, it goes its own way. An observer would take longer to recognize the shape of a truck because of the paint.
Back in World War II, the US Army figured out the trick to camouflaging vehicles. They did not use it much. The Army relied more on other means of concealment. It was not until the 1970s that a serious attempt was made at using camouflage. The “Woodland” pattern became the norm. It was a computer-generated pattern from the days before desktop computers. However, the ideas stressed in older Army manuals were solid, with few exceptions.
The key element of camouflage painting is to disguise the shape of an item, and to make it blend better with its surroundings. An essential consideration is distance. While soldiers fight in the range of 100 to 500 yards, vehicles engage at 500 to 3000 yards. The individual soldier can use smaller patters, so as to blend in with bushes and ground cover. Vehicles need larger patterns.
The Army method used a base color, and one or two camouflaging colors. The base was usually olive drab. Camouflaging colors could be Desert Red (Terra Cotta), Desert Tan (Mustard), Light Green or Medium Brown. The Army suggested painting usersides and wheel wells white, but this was not a good idea and few ever used it. For winter, the entire vehicle would be white. If in a wooded or rocky area, the vehicle might be hit with a pattern of green or even blue. Otherwise, it stayed all white.
Black is not as common a natural color as you may think. Many things we describe as black are actually a very dark gray. When a black item moves in nature, it is noticed. This is why the color must be used carefully. It is especially bad to use large black swaths in winter camouflage. Though small stripes may help in winter woods, big black swirls can be a problem. Olive drab takes advantage of shadows while not creating a large black spot that might be visible at a distance.
By the way, the idea color for counterbalancing white in a snowy setting is a very pale blue. The shadows on snow are not black or grey, but light blue.
Small patterns work for individual soldiers at close range. They do not help much at long range, or when used on vehicles. Seen at a distance, the small pattern blends into one generic color. A tank painted in a tan with green spots may look like a greenish sand or a light olive at a distance. Remember also that the further away a thing is, the ligther its color appears to our eyes.
German practice in World War II was to leave camouflage up to local commanders. The result varied. While small patterns could hide vehicles that were well-covered in woods, their actual effect was negligible at long range.
The idea of blending colors is something to consider. An IRA tactic in Northern Ireland was to paint walls a light color. This would silhouette the dark-uniformed soldiers, making them better sniper targets. Camouflage that works in one environment can be a liability in others.
Some environments make camouflage a danger rather than a help. The US Army’s proposed desert camouflage for World War II was based on the deserts of the American Southwest. American deserts tend to be covered in scrub, cactus and rocks. The Mongolian desert near Nomonhan is similar. The camouflage pattern would work in the Gobi or US deserts, but not most of the Sahara. The Saharan, Saudi Arabian and Iraqi Deserts are mostly sand. For the Sahara, a single shade of desert tan is best. The addition of other colors might make the vehicle stand out, rather than blend with the environment.
The Afrika Korps learned to stick with a plain tan. Allied forces in both Gulf Wars learned to do the same. The sandy desert is one place where pattern camouflage is a liability instead of an asset.
The United States had adopted Olive Drab long before World War II. Dark green was a common color for military equipment such as wagons, gun carriages and caissons. It was used by several armies before the American Civil War. Britian and the Soviets used colors similar to Forest Green. Germany used a very dark shade of grey known as “Panzer Grey.” The early shade was almost black.
As we said earlier, black could make a vehicle more conspicuous. It can make the silhouette of a vehicle more distinct. Dark greens blend better with shadows, even in places that are not green. While a dark grey is not as bad as black, it is not as good as dark shades of green.
Of course, much has to do with how the vehicle is hidden and how well it moves under concealment. A vehicle running along a ridgeline will stand out as a vehicle, no matter what color it is painted.
The trick to camouflage painting is using a pattern that continues over the contours of the vehicle. It maintains its own pattern, regardless of the shape of the vehicle. This fools the eye of an observer into seeing the pattern and not what it covers. His mind “fills in the blanks” so that he thinks he sees an innocuous shape.
For US. tanks and vehicles, prior to 1970, use a dark olive drab base color. Camouflage colors include light olive drab, desert tan (mustard), desert red (red-brown / Terra cotta) and medium brown.
For British vehicles, use a forest green with brown for Europe, and a sand tan with brown or green for the desert.
For the Russians, use forest green with a brown or tan color.
For Germany in World War II, use Panzer grey with green or brown. You can also use a sand tan base color with brown and green. Finally, the Afrika Korps used various shades of tan ranging from sand to mustard in color. German used two shades of brown. One was almost chocolate, the other closer to terra cotta.
(More info on the Afrika Korps was in last month's issue)
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This and the next picture show how vehicles are more visible because of poor use of camouflage. |
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