military vehicles in Northern Ireland

[fv1620]

Postwar British AFVs should be painted in Dark Admiralty Grey primer. The finish for this Pig was Light Admiralty Grey. This was the colour that I found inside the vehicle & is a very close match. I know that the 10 Humbers used by the RUC were painted this colour in 1962. This was to match the fleet of Commer armoured cars.



According to the records in 1963 the colour was changed to "olive drab". Now I don't know if this was genuinely olive drab or some clerks word for an army green. I have it documented that in 1969 they were definitely painted in a Rustoleum Green. It has been impossible to find what shades of Rustoleum were around in the 1960s.

Colour pictures I have vary with the degree of sunlight, its angle & the degree of wetness, let alone the individualities of the printers.

So the colour it was in this season gone was only a provisional green but a colour chosen to be quite diffrent from a colour used by the British Army. Besides it was very cheap & I had a lot of it.

Unfortunately the pig suffered a major rebuilt when it was taken over by the Army in 1970. So matching the original green has been a problem. However I have been able to cleanly lift a 4 inch patch of paint off an ex-RUC Shorland. This reveals the proper paint to be a satin, in a dark almost Brunswick Green.

I have large quantities of gloss Brunswick Green & intend to blend it to the correct colour. The problem is to get it to a satin finish. I have been told that adding French chalk, talcum powder etc will do this. But nobody that offered this advice has done it. So I don't know the quatities needed nor know how it will effect the strength of the paint etc.

The reason for moving on from grey was that I got somewhat depressed that the vehicle was largely ignored at MV shows. Because it was not green it was not in general taken seriously. I remember I was at a show next to a standard Mk2 Army pig. Visitors ignored the display information by my vehicle & were looking all over the green one & said "wow this is a Belfast one". Well mine has the registration still on it 2996 OI which means it was registered in Belfast in 1958.