Vehicle Schemes of the Third World War, Part 2 (The Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia)

The Soviet Union and Poland

The Soviets had a multitude of camo patterns and paints during the war, but the most common base pattern was a color that compared very closely to FS (Federal Standard) 34077, a dark green known as Zashchitnuy Zelno that the Soviets had been painting their equipment in since 1956. Thousands of Soviet vehicles saw action wearing this color, and it was still the most common paint scheme in Soviet service, especially in Category III and Mobilization Only divisions, but this scheme was not limited to those units by any means.

Soviet T-72B from an unidentified division from the 38th Army in Zashchitnuy Zelno scheme, Manchuria, 1996

Soviet T-64 from postwar modeling magazine, taken from a photo from an actual example in Poland, ca. 1999 (Taken from Cybermodeler)

Zashchitnuy Zelno Scheme

The Soviets had had field regulations regarding disruptive camouflage since the 1960s, but the colors were those used often for other purposes, such as primer coats for equipment or interior colors, and the application and patterns were left on a haphazard basis to the Field Engineer Brigades and was often not applied except in time of war if it was applied at all.

Osprey plate of BMP-1K attached to unknown MR Division in the Ukraine, 1998. Note the Brown No2 and a non-regulation lighter brown (from civilian stocks?) overspray over the base scheme

From the same Osprey of a BMP-1 somewhere in Poland, September 1997, unit unknown, this time there has been a mix of faded Yellow No1 and Brown No2 over sprayed over the base green

Soviet T-80 from 79th Guards Tank Division, in a prewar photo ca. 1994, with an overspray of Silver Grey No1 and Black No2 over the standard paint scheme

Soviet Field Camouflage Schemes

This practice changed in the 1980s, as the Soviets developed a three color (sometimes, only one color was applied) scheme, called “MERDCski” in the West by observers due to its similarities to the US MERDC scheme.

Soviet T-80 platoon from 25th TD moving up to the front, July 1997, Poland. This photo is a good example of the simplified “MERDCski” scheme.

Soviet T-80 Color Plate taken from postwar modeling magazine, ca. 2019, Example is from a T-80 from 12th Guards Tank Division, Poland, ca. March 1997 with a more complicated version of the “MERDCski” scheme. (taken from Cybermodeler).

MERDCski Paint Chart

Poland used similar schemes to the Soviets, apart from the “MERDCski” scheme, which the Poles never adopted. The main way one differentiated between Soviet and Polish vehicles was the unique “diamond” national insignia.

Polish T-55 with prominent insignia on either side of the gun mantlet.

Czechoslovakia

The Czechs had been an early adopter of disruptive pattern schemes for tanks, having done so before WW-II. The current schemes were based off a water-based tempura paint that did not stand up to particularly hard wear, but was easy to reapply, even during the worst of the Twilight years. Standards and even paint shades were left up to the individual unit commanders, and often, as things broke down, the paint schemes got even more complex, and in some cases, gaudier. The Czech tricolor insignia was always present as well, and many vehicles, no matter how shoddy their paint scheme, would have the tricolor loving applied and touched up whenever possible. The colors that were supposed to be used were similar to the Soviet pre-“MERDCski” paints, and the base scheme was the same Zashchitnuy Zelno the Soviets happened to use.

Color Plate of Czech T-55 taken from Czech State News TV broadcast of January 5th, 1998. Vehicle is heavily oversprayed with Yellow No1 and Brown No2

Czech T-55 from Museum of the US Army, Ft. Belvoir, 2022. Vehicle was captured in this scheme of Yellow No1 and Sand No2 over the base scheme by elements of 1st Armored Division, November 1999

Vehicle Paint Schemes of the Third World War Part 1, NATO

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
Summer Verdant	Forest Green	Light Green	Sand	Black
Winter Verdant	Forest Green	Field Drab	Sand	Black
Tropical Verdant	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 4^th 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