Naive question about Soviet vehicle colors

[Philippe]

I was looking at Uncle Tgt's latest productions (great mods, by the way, and thanks especially for the minor Axis allies' trucks), when I suddenly remembered that I had never learned the answer to the most basic question about Soviet vehicles that has been bothering me since I first started looking at East Front mods.

Why are some of them blue-green and why are some of them a variation on Soviet-uniform-light-chocolate brown?

I visited a Red Army tank site once when I still had the time to worry about such things. All I came away from it with was the realization that what came rolling at the Germans over the steppe was probably not a uniform shade of anything, if for no other reason than that if you move half your industrial plant a few thousand miles in the middle of a war, there may be a few distribution problems when it comes to getting the right can of paint to the right place at the right time. And the Soviets were never too good at that under the best of circumstances.

So back to my original question: apart from experiments in camouflage (which would be limited by the availability of paint rather than by lack of imagination), what determines the base color of Soviet vehicles? The factory that produced them? The type of unit they were in (e.g. Guard vs. regular) ? Would some units in a division be chocolate brown and others blue-green? Was the distinction chronological?

This, of course, leads into the practical question. If you have the choice between outfitting all the vehicles in one base color or the other, what do you do? And on what basis do you decide to do it? Will the vehicles be all brown or all green, or a mixture of the two, and if one or the other, why one as opposed to the other?

[Corvidae]

The base colour for all soviet military vehicles is a standard uniform **** green, It is very similar to the colour that permiates the lower bricks in a badly maintained, cinderblock cow barn with mould problems,

All variations are weathering , camoflage, dirt, or personal revenge against the bastards who applied the innitial coat of paint,

Exceptions to this rule are,,, Early war vehicles that were rushed to the front without paint (primer red, or bare metal) These vehicles would later be painted by crews if they survived, using whatever paint was available, But the most common paint was military standard , **** green,,

The soviets produced vast quantitys of this colour, and it was widely used for everything because it was so cheap, In many cases ,, the only paint available was the standard **** green,

When rust bubbles up through **** green paint ,, it turns brownish, like a bloody stool specimine that has been smeared across the surface and left to dry in the sun,

[Philippe]

Very colorful in a scatological sort of way, but it doesn't really satisfy my question.

There are two predominant base colors in use for Soviet vehicles in CMBB. Why is that? And why is the original base that shipped with the game brown rather than green.

Though they don't always get the number of stars right on American flags in the 1940's, the BF.com crew is not known for making mistakes about something as fundamental as vehicle color. If they used a particular color, there must have been a good reason.

[John_d]

Whilst we're on the subject- why is it that almost all Alled vehicles only come in shades of brown and green, whereas alot of Axis vehicles look like an explosion in a paint factory? I can't imagine how alot of the German camo patterns (especially the navy blue '41 colour scheme) actually provide any kind of camoflage

[imported_no_one]

Originally posted by John_d:

I can't imagine how alot of the German camo patterns (especially the navy blue '41 colour scheme) actually provide any kind of camoflage

I don't actually have any knowledge about this subject,but one way of looking at it is that was exactly the point.They wanted it to be seen.Haven't you ever had an almost indestructable KV or Tiger and parked it atop a hill for your opponent to look at?

Then again,I am probably wrong.

[Shmavis]

Originally posted by Corvidae:

The base colour for all soviet military vehicles is a standard uniform **** green, It is very similar to the colour that permiates the lower bricks in a badly maintained, cinderblock cow barn with mould problems,

All variations are weathering , camoflage, dirt, or personal revenge against the bastards who applied the innitial coat of paint,

Exceptions to this rule are,,, Early war vehicles that were rushed to the front without paint (primer red, or bare metal) These vehicles would later be painted by crews if they survived, using whatever paint was available, But the most common paint was military standard , **** green,,

The soviets produced vast quantitys of this colour, and it was widely used for everything because it was so cheap, In many cases ,, the only paint available was the standard **** green,

When rust bubbles up through **** green paint ,, it turns brownish, like a bloody stool specimine that has been smeared across the surface and left to dry in the sun,

Pottymouth! As a parent, some horrible memories have been conjurred by these remarks. *shudder*

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by John_d:

[snips]like an explosion in a paint factory? I can't imagine how alot of the German camo patterns (especially the navy blue '41 colour scheme) actually provide any kind of camoflage

Navy blue?

All the best,

John.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by John_d:

Whilst we're on the subject- why is it that almost all Alled vehicles only come in shades of brown and green, whereas alot of Axis vehicles look like an explosion in a paint factory? I can't imagine how alot of the German camo patterns (especially the navy blue '41 colour scheme) actually provide any kind of camoflage

I'd suggest you have some further research to do, then; tan was a commonly used colour on desert and Mediterranean vehicles in Allied use. In NW Europe, well, the terrain was predominantly green and brown and the Germans used those colours over a base of dark yellow while the Allies used them exclusively.

I don't believe the Germans found that their elaborate camo schemes helped them any more than their adoption of Zimmerit, their use of 3000 different waffenfarbe pipings on shoulder straps, or their idiotic retention of such ephemara as collar tabs and helmet eagles. The Germans were geniuses when it came to creating racial categories of humans but much less clever when it came to investing time, energy and money into worthwhile war winning measures.

[General Bolt]

The one I don't get is the brown gray diagonal paint on the early British desert vehicles.

[MikeyD]

For much of the war Germany was on the defensive and the opponent had command of the air. The late war camou schemes were mostly to keep a passing Thunderbolt or IL-2 from identifying a stationary tank on the ground. British 'dazzle' type camou was less to hide a vehicle than to foil attempts at identification and accurate ranging. The Brit desert paint scheme assumes the vehicle can be seen. The German paint scheme hopes to shield it from view. Plain solid paint schemes work best on moving vehicles. A vehicle with a busy camou scheme is actually easier for the eye to spot on the move!

[MikeyD]

Back to the subject of Russian paint schemes.

The most recent articles in Military Modelling (MUCH more authoritative than Fine Scale modeler!) are tending towards a dark black-green color for Russian tanks, and that was the color of a perfectly preserved KV-1 pulled from a river a couple years ago. I tried to shoot for that color (or a faded version) in my later Russian T34 mods. There's a secondary color too, apparently a khaki color that you often see on Russian artillery pieces. just as the war started there was a plan to do 2-tone paint schemes on Russian tanks. more pressing matters intervened, but still the occassional 2-tone T-34 photo pops up (again see my T34 mods).