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Armor/AFV: Canadian Armor
Discuss all types of Canadian Armor of all eras.
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Canadian OD
Biggles2
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Posted: Sunday, February 12, 2017 - 07:37 PM UTC
Out of curiosity, did Canadian Armed Forces use the British formula of OD, or the more simpler US formula? Or did we use an entirely different formula?
tankmodeler
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Posted: Sunday, February 12, 2017 - 10:23 PM UTC
Assuming you're talking about WW II, I believe we used US OD as it was easier to acquire.

What would make you say that the American colour was "simpler" than the Brit colour? Curious.

Paul
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Posted: Sunday, February 12, 2017 - 11:33 PM UTC
In WW2, vehicles were painted according to British standards, using British colors. Vehicles in made in Canada were after 1944, were painted SCC 15 Olive Drab, as per the standard.

Some Shermans, those delivered straight from the US would have been remained US Olive Drab until serviced. That would include some Sherman V's that arrived in Italy direct from US. When these vehicles were serviced, they were painted SCC 3 Khaki and camouflaged as per current British standards. Prior to being shipped to NW Europe in late 1944/early 1945, they were painted SCC 15 Olive Drab.
Biggles2
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Posted: Monday, February 13, 2017 - 03:45 AM UTC

Quoted Text

Assuming you're talking about WW II, I believe we used US OD as it was easier to acquire.

What would make you say that the American colour was "simpler" than the Brit colour? Curious.

Paul

This is an assumption. US OD was just black and ochre. Pretty simple. I forgot to specify post D-Day. Since I got two different answers, can I assume that Shermans, being manufactured in US, were in US OD, but soft skins and armoured cars manufactured in Canada were painted SCC 15.
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Posted: Monday, February 13, 2017 - 05:02 AM UTC

Quoted Text


Quoted Text

Assuming you're talking about WW II, I believe we used US OD as it was easier to acquire.

What would make you say that the American colour was "simpler" than the Brit colour? Curious.

Paul

This is an assumption. US OD was just black and ochre. Pretty simple. I forgot to specify post D-Day. Since I got two different answers, can I assume that Shermans, being manufactured in US, were in US OD, but soft skins and armoured cars manufactured in Canada were painted SCC 15.


Shermans manufactured in the US were left US No.9 Olive Drab until they were in need of service and repainting. Firefly's were repainted during the conversion.

Biggles2
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Posted: Monday, February 13, 2017 - 08:48 PM UTC
So, by 1945 there would be a marked difference between the Fireflies and 75mm Shermans in a troop? Meaning the Fireflies would fade to a greenish colour, and the other tanks to a brownish hue?
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Posted: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - 12:11 AM UTC
Possibly, but if they lasted long enough to fade then they probably lasted long enough for a major service and got resprayed in SCC 15. (The life of a Sherman in NWE was nasty, brutish, and short!) But the bigger factor is use - half an hour's road march would give them all a uniform coat of dust to hide the base colour, and all the added gear (spare track links etc) would obscure the paint anyway.
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Posted: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - 01:07 AM UTC
Was hard to tell with Canadian tanks with all the track links welded onto the tanks for extra armor.....
tankmodeler
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Posted: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - 02:19 AM UTC

Quoted Text

In WW2, vehicles were painted according to British standards, using British colors. Vehicles in made in Canada were after 1944, were painted SCC 15 Olive Drab, as per the standard.

I actually believe this to be incorrect.

Canadian vehicles, made in Canada were US OD#9 in lieu of the SCC15. So the CMPs that were shipped from here in OD, were US OD after the spring of 1944.

Paul
tankmodeler
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Posted: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - 02:24 AM UTC

Quoted Text

So, by 1945 there would be a marked difference between the Fireflies and 75mm Shermans in a troop? Meaning the Fireflies would fade to a greenish colour, and the other tanks to a brownish hue?

As Tom says, the amount of fading any single combat vehicle would see is next to nothing, on average, as on average, they didn't last long. US OD was also a very durable paint, fading and chipping almost not at all.

On non-combat vehicles, especially in sunny areas, you might, after a couple years service start to see some differences. But by then the war was over.

In fresh paint, the two colours were almost indistinguishable with the SCC15 (apparently) looking just ever so much slightly greener than US OD.

Once you spray your model in OD the weathering and dust applied over it will have a much larger part to play in the visible colour than the underlying paint. :-)

Paul
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Posted: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - 02:34 AM UTC

Quoted Text

This is an assumption. US OD was just black and ochre. Pretty simple.

In industrial quantities, both paints are pretty "simple" which is to say not that simple at all. Simplicity in these scales relates more to how easy it was to get supplies of the various pigments and then how stable were those pigments from batch to batch.

When you are throwing 1 ton skids of pigment in the paint making hopper, throwing in X full skids of 2 pigments versus X full skids of 4 pigments (or however many it was) is not enough "more simple" to even mention.

If one or the other requires an extensive preprocessing step, that would make it more or less simple than the other. For instance, if the Ochre had to be kept at a particular humidity and then dried in a kiln immediately prior to use versus the UK OD pigments which could be used straight out of a barrel, then the US OD would be less simple.

There's no way to tell based only on the number of ingredients.

But that's my engineering brain talking again. Move along, nothing to see here...

Paul
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