Vehicle Paint Schemes of the Third World War
I am writing this as a companion piece to my previous
article, as I felt that this needed more attention, not to mention the fact
that paint schemes need a good base, and what better than the “historical” paint
schemes of the time.
Now that said, I get this is alternate history, and in the
vehicle guides, there are their own interpretations of paint schemes that don’t
bear any resemblance to what wound up on vehicles in the mid-1990s. GDW in
their defense, wrote the books in the mid-1980s and much of the color plate
work I must say was extremely speculative.
They did what they could with no internet and a reference library that was not
at all the size of what is available to most modelers and gamers today. That
said, I personally think they did a fine job, and one can get into the whys and
wherefores of why they did what they did ad
nauseum.
Of course, we won’t be doing that.
So, on with the show, as it were.
The United States of America
CARC 3-Tone Scheme
The CARC (Chemical Agent Resistant Coating) 3 Color Scheme,
hereafter referred to as CARC was a scheme developed in agreement by NATO as a
whole because it became plainly obvious by the early 1980s that the myriad of
NATO vehicle camo patterns across the different armies made it a rather easy
process to identify which army one was facing, which would only simplify
intelligence gathering efforts for the Warsaw Pact in the event of war.
CARC was applied to most of the Army and Marine vehicle
parks by the time the war had broken out in 1995, and efforts were accelerated
to get the rest of the force painted by the time the US entered the war in late
1996. But, not every vehicle in the fleet was repainted, or if CARC was
applied, often simply the base green color was used, and the other two colors
were not, as repainting vehicles was not seen as a priority in many reserve
units as they rushed through their mobilizations and were sent to war. Plus,
CARC as a paint was not the safest in the world to work with. By all
accounts, it was caustic, toxic, and often needed to be applied under very
controlled circumstances, leading to a bottleneck at the depot of vehicles
needing to be repainted.
As the war ground on, the paints turned out to hold up well
to hard wear, but touchups and repaints were often done with whatever paint
stocks were handy, leading to some odd shades and combinations, and these
paints often did not match up to the standards of the original CARC paint. This
was especially true after the nuclear exchange began and supply lines began to
collapse.
M1A1 of 1-70th
Armor, 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division, July 1996, in pre-deployment
training at Ft. Polk with CARC 3 Color Scheme
Paint chart for 3 Color Scheme (European)
Color Chart for Desert CARC Paints
General note: If you’re going to paint these schemes? I would
go with Vallejo, AK, or Ammo, Battlefront is a good second, and Citadel only if
you must.
MERDC (Mobility Equipment Research and Design Command)
The MERDC pattern was developed in the 1970s as a
standardized set of camouflage for US Army vehicles and soldiered on
throughout the 1980s and in some units, into the early 1990s and the Twilight
War, as mentioned in the CARC section above, this was especially true of
reserve units, who depending on the speed of their mobilization, were often
going to war without bothering to repaint their vehicles from the now obsolete
MERDC pattern. The good news about MERDC was that it was easier to apply, and
the paints didn’t have the associated health risks or were as difficult to
apply, but the patterns themselves were quite complicated and as the war ground
on, were often applied without much care or adherence to Army or USMC
regulations.
There were several schemes that all saw use during the war,
they are listed here:
Name of Scheme
|
1st
(Base Color)
|
2nd
(Primary Band) Color
|
3rd
(Lesser Band) Color
|
4th (Y
or Line) Accent
|
Desert Grey
|
Sand
|
Field Drab
|
Earth Yellow
|
Black
|
Desert Red
|
Earth Red
|
Earth Yellow
|
Sand
|
Black
|
Snow, Temperate Climate w/Open Terrain
|
White
|
Field Drab
|
Sand
|
Black
|
Snow,
Temperate Climate w/Trees
|
Forest Green
|
White
|
Sand
|
Black
|
|
|
Forest Green
|
Light Green
|
Sand
|
Black
|
Winter Verdant
|
Forest Green
|
Field Drab
|
Sand
|
Black
|
|
|
Forest Green
|
Dark Green
|
Light Green
|
Black
|
Arctic
|
White
|
White
|
White
|
White
|
 |
| Partial MERDC breakdown from postwar modeling guide, ca. 2019. |
M901 from 2-152nd Infantry (Mech), 76th Infantry Brigade (IN ARNG), 38th Infantry Division, preparing to entrain for shipment to Europe. The date is suspected to be sometime in early March 1997. The vehicle is wearing a Winter Verdant scheme(Picture is from armorrama.com)
Many vehicles that had a MERDC scheme applied tended not to
retain it throughout the war, this
was especially true of the Verdant schemes. They were rather complicated to
apply, and often, the schemes were touched up with mismatched or
scavenged/captured paint stocks. This could sometimes give certain American
vehicles a rather “loud” appearance at times. Or, the schemes would
be abbreviated, and the vehicles would be painted a single tone (the most common
being Forest Green), for ease of repainting. This was especially common as the
war ground on.
Paint Chart for MERDC:
Note: As above, stick with the Vallejo, AK, or Ammo,
Battlefront is a good second, and Citadel only if you must, the colors are a
bit harder to match here, but keep in mind in a Twilight: 2000 world, paint schemes will be faded and touched up
with non-reg colors, so don’t get too insane about colors being a little off.
Germany, East and West
The Germans really are a tale of two armies. The West German
Army went with the three-color scheme as listed above under the Americans since
1984, as they were the army that had developed the scheme in the first place.
By the outbreak of war in 1996, the entirety of the Bundeswehr was wearing the
scheme, but as the war wore on, and stocks of the required colors ran out,
older stocks of the Gelbolive color that had been retired were broken out of
storage and used to repaint vehicles when it was required.
Leopard 2 in
Gelboliv scheme abandoned due to lack of fuel near Frankfurt-on-Oder, Unit
Unknown, September 1999
As for the East Germans, they were undergoing something of a
transition, moving from the Soviet Green that had been a hallmark of their
vehicle park for many years, to a camo scheme that consisted of a three-color
summer scheme, and a two-color winter scheme.
The schemes consisted of an Olive-Green base for both the
summer and winter schemes, with bands of Dusk Grey and Black Grey. There was a
slightly older scheme that was Beige and Brown that was seen in Manchuria, but
it was not common and often vehicles were repainted as soon as their first
visit to the depot. In both cases, white paint was used to cover the
non-Olive-Green bands for the winter scheme. In both cases, Olive Green was
supposed to cover anywhere from 45-60% of the vehicle, with the other colors
covering 20-27.5%.
The transition had been going on since 1988, so most of the
regular army had made the changeover, but the reserves and mobilization-only
formations went to war in their Soviet Green schemes until 1997, when much of
it was repainted hastily with West German surplus stocks of Gelbolive to cut
down on the number of friendly fire incidents.
East German T-72
as a gate guard in front of Paderborn Kaserne, September 9th, 2015. Note the
two-tone scheme that has been applied, as stocks of the Dusk Grey apparently
ran out.
Ural 375 Truck
illustration of three tone scheme taken from East German field manual dated
1992 (Image taken from Panzerbear.de).
United Kingdom
The British Army was the singular exception in NATO,
soldiering on with the two-tone scheme they had been using since at least the
1970s, and they showed no sign of making any transition to the NATO 3-tone
scheme, no matter what the rest of NATO said. The scheme was easy to paint and
maintain, and as the war wore on, British vehicles still looked “nattier” than
their other NATO counterparts (relatively) as the colors they used for the
scheme were relatively easy to find.
That said, there was a “unique” scheme that one brigade of
the British Army transitioned to, and that was the Berlin Brigade’s unique
urban scheme that contrary to orders and maybe even a bit of common sense, was
retained by the Brigade throughout the war, and it’s surviving vehicles paraded
in Portsmouth in 2006 still wearing that scheme, some of them having it hastily
applied on the trip back to England.
Saxon in assembly area
of 2/Royal Green Jackets before jumpoff for ADVENT CROWN, July 1997. This photo
is a very good study of the British two-tone scheme (photo taken from Cold War
Gamer.com).
Canada
The Canadian army’s presence in Europe at the outset of the war
was limited to the presence of the 4th Canadian Mechanized Battle Group,
who soldiered on through the Third World War with their obsolete gear. The
Leopards had been repainted in a 3-color scheme that approximated the 3-tone
NATO scheme, but with different tones, while the rest of the army went to war
with the “European” scheme which did not hold up to any kind of hard wear. With
the outbreak of war and mobilization, the situation became even more confused,
with vehicles being repainted in a variety of patterns, and paint stocks,
including a set of trucks that were part of a late deploying battalion in 1997
being painted in a scheme that looked suspiciously like British WW-II SCC 2
Bronze Green! The situation only worsened as the war continued and by the time
Canadian troops had managed to crush the last of the separatist holdouts in
2012, one could find surviving vehicles and equipment in just about any shade
of green, grey, and brown you could name.
Leo C1 of unknown
unit leaving depot after overhaul in Canada in preparation for deployment overseas.
January 1997 (taken from tanknutdave.com). Note the hard-worn paint scheme and
the improvised Polish flag.
M150 upgraded to M113A2 standard during pre-war family
open day in 1994. The vehicle also demonstrates the issues with the paint
scheme
Canadian 3-tone Scheme
Canadian European Scheme
