Info needed: correct colours for WWII Aust vehicles

[Mrs Vampire]

Great to hear Tony. I am in urgent need of the green as I have started on small components already .

So count me in ony any effort to get it right .

The exact edges of the disruptive camo on the Stuart are not possible to find ...well some are... but the general pattern is still there. I can get to within a few inches of the edges doing a sort of join the dots exercise.

It is very clear the pattern is nothing like those in the archive orders. I am happy with that given the Camo committee was not really established until August 1942 and I suppose by the time My Stuart was painted things were still a bit of a work in progress. Archive photos tend to suggest some variation in the actual patterns.

As to the colours I agree with you they would have been standard. I disagree with suggestions that there was variation on account of local purchases/mixtures.

Two of the main aggregation of tanks on the East coast at that time were around Narrabri in NSW and Murgon in Qld ....I just don't see the local Bunnings of the time having the couple of hundred litres of paint needed to paint the fleet disruptive. Paint was strictly rationed at the time and Oil Based paints of the type used was not at all common .

The army managed to get food Building material ammo and fuel out to the camps ...it seems to me getting some paint into the supply chain would have been easy enough.

The Archive does speak about paint shortages at one point but the order is to delay the process of applying disruptive paint until stocks are available and until that happens to only paint vehicles that have an immediate operational need. No where in the archive is an order to source stocks locally .

So I am with you on the Army using paint manufactured in bulk by the leading paint companies of the day to laid down specifications ....as the little Australian Standards pamphlet above indicates.

Which has a fascinating side effect: if you search for it on line it comes up ! but only to take you to a scam site that leads you to a junk PDF converter....