Info needed: correct colours for WWII Aust vehicles

[Mike K]

After many expensive stuff ups with paint retailers, I decided to do my own tinting . It's a cheaper option in the long run because there is no time limit on your own time. The paint retailers are paying a employee to mix your colour and they just want to get it out the door and get the money off you. If it turns out wrong, tough luck.

For green , start with a yellow base , I buy damaged cans for 1/2 price and you go from there. Takes some experimenting but my theory is : during the war they didn't want complicated tints and mixes, they kept it simple because large orders were from the Govt. , with may thousands of gallons being manufactured. There must have been cases of poor quality paint being supplied to the vehicle manufacturers , its human nature, rip off the govt.

This is all a complicated subject and with so many army units scattered all over the country and world, its nigh on impossible to cover every possible scenario . In some cases I'm sure units purchased paint from a local hardware store .

[Mrs Vampire]

Hi Mike ... Do you have a bar code for that reference??

After looking at the files concerning three tone I am not convinced a;; of these orders were actually instituted and I am not convinced a reference to KG3 prior to the final decision to adopt it was in fact KG3 and not KGj ...I am not convinced all of the correspondents were familiar with the correct names as written in the standard.

That said Feb 1942 is right in the transition zone from the prewar to the standard colour plates. I put the system into four distinct phases.
1 prewar until the declaration of war in Europe august 1939.
2 from declaration of E war to pearl harbour
3 Pearl Harbor to December 1943
4 from December 1943 until the adoption of DBD24
The second period seems to have had DBG 24 on the way out ..some KG3 and some Portland/Light Stone for ME The introduction of disruptive and the colour plates was in contemplation as early as late 1941ish based on the Nobel's system of colours used by the British and I imagine units were still putting out orders for 1941 schemes into the early parts of 1942 as they were later putting out orders for 1943 schemes in 1944 .
I am still not settled on this but it seems it had taken some months to catch up with the latest orders and for the supply chain to find them

As for the paint being substandard I strongly disagree , There was some from Victoria that failed and had to be reapplied however all others were Alkyd paint made to a stringent specification. That some is still extant on vehicles all be it weathered speaks to its longevity and sturdiness, Photographs from the time do not show flaking patchy or noticeably faded paint.

Flo rite can mix any of the standard colours to a highly precise shade,However if mixing your own suits then well done .

[Mrs Vampire]

I am familiar with Laurie's article and I mean no offence when I say it is anecdotal.
It is not sufficiently documented to say it is more than recollection .

Mike I am equally certain they did not purchase paint locally... there is an absolute lack of evidence to support the contention and an ocean of evidence that the Army supply chain worked

[Lang]

Gina

I agree with you about the supply chain being OK and local purchase not common.

This is probably one reason why vehicles remained in all sorts of previous colour schemes. Instructions would come out for a new scheme but the units had to order their requirements - stuff didn't just appear out of the sky.

A transport company might have tins of paint appear because regimental headquarters had ordered it for all their sub-units but if regimental headquarters had other things on their plate and did not want to get tied up painting trucks nobody would make the effort to work out their requirements and place the order with the supply chain.

Units such as transport were often far flung on semi-permanent attachment to other formations and it would be unlikely a transport company commander would like to get involved in repainting away from home base (which they possibly never went to) so HQ would not get an order from him. If regimental HQ was slack and didn't demand requirements from their sub-units all their far-flung transport companies would just carry on in their old clothes.

If I was a transport company commander and had a fleet of well kept nicely originally painted trucks I certainly would resist having camouflage, or whatever, painted on them in the field with a 4 inch paint brush.

Individual non-transport units also had thousands of their own trucks and it would have been like herding cats trying to get orders for paint in from each owner.

Lang

[Mrs Vampire]

I think that's about right Lang

The file on the three tone scheme has the Qld area commander complaining long and loud about the expenditure of man power on a new scheme that was little different from those he already had .

There is also the rider on almost all orders to re camouflage, including the move to KG3 in Dec 1943, that vehicles were only to be repainted from new, when the need arose , if paint had deteriorated or been damaged or if the unit was to move fwd to a combat area.

Mike : I am an engineer by profession so an a bit wedded to the scientific method where " Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes, i.e., evidence collected in a casual or informal manner and relying heavily or entirely on personal testimony. When compared to other types of evidence, anecdotal evidence is generally regarded as limited in value due to a number of potential weaknesses, but may be considered within the scope of scientific method as some anecdotal evidence can be both empirical and verifiable, e.g. in the use of case studies in medicine. Other anecdotal evidence, however, does not qualify as scientific evidence, because its nature prevents it from being investigated by the scientific method.

Where only one or a few anecdotes are presented, there is a larger chance that they may be unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise non-representative samples of typical cases.[1][2] Similarly, psychologists have found that due to cognitive bias people are more likely to remember notable or unusual examples rather than typical examples.[3] Thus, even when accurate, anecdotal evidence is not necessarily representative of a typical experience. Accurate determination of whether an anecdote is "typical" requires statistical evidence.[4] Misuse of anecdotal evidence is an informal fallacy and is sometimes referred to as the "person who" fallacy ("I know a person who..."; "I know of a case where..." etc.) which places undue weight on experiences of close peers which may not be typical. Compare with hasty generalization.

The term is sometimes used in a legal context to describe certain kinds of testimony which are uncorroborated by objective, independent evidence such as notarized documentation, photographs, audio-visual recordings, etc."

[Lang]

Gina

That tells me you are in search of the truth on what actual regulations were and what actual colour/pattern specifications were. In other words a serious academic treatise.

Unfortunately the overwhelming evidence that those regulations and specifications were ignored, altered, delayed wholesale throughout the forces at the whim of just about anyone having control over a vehicle means it can never be a record of what actually happened.

Evidence of such wayward behaviour is not only in the form of anecdotal stories but in thousands of photographs of the period and as you have mentioned in official correspondence.

I fear if you are trying arrive at some semblance of order by trying to lock the plan with the action it can never happen.

Lang

[Mrs Vampire]

Lanf

I am not as pessimistic as you in that regard.
If the evidence is overwhelming I must be looking in the wrong places because in documents and photographs I have never found it.

I would be eternally grateful if you could direct me to it .

[Mike K]

Originally Posted by Gina Vampire

I am familiar with Laurie's article and I mean no offence when I say it is anecdotal.

Laurie took particular note of what he was seeing re: vehicle colours, this was a very unusual thing to do to say the least. Yes, it is limited to the Sydney region only but it is still revealing. I would describe his article as being 'primary evidence' . Because his article doesn't have an official Govt. office stamp on it, doesn't mean we can dismiss it as being anecdotal. If all of written history was based on official reports only, it would be sad thing and give a very distorted view.