Info needed: correct colours for WWII Aust vehicles

[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