Hi everyone,
I am currently working on Tamiya’s Panther D and have been looking around the web trying to find inspiration for the paint scheme I want to use. Most of what I find is panthers with the dark yellow base and green bands/slashes or the tri color crew applied cammo. I did however come across a drawing of a Panther D in just dark yellow. The caption said the vehicle was part of the Grossdeutchland division? I again looked online for pictures of the vehicle the drawing was based on and cannot find anything. Does anyone have/know where to find a picture or some kind of history about all yellow Panthers being deployed in a combat role?

I will stand corrected, but I think Panthers as with most German tanks were delivered to units in Dunkelgelb for painting by units and individual crews in the field (there are some exceptions such as those factory applied schemes like "Ambush" pattern etc).

That said, I don't know the specific vehicle you speak of but I would imagine there were just as many all dark yellow Panthers as there were camo ones. I mean, how many must have arrived in theatre just a day or so before (or during) a major offensive by the enemy or even counter offensive by the Germans meaning there simply wasn't time to paint the vehicle with resupply of fuel, ammo, servicing and rest/feeding for the crew being much higher up the "to do" list than spraying some green and red-brown paint about trying to 'camouflage' a 45 tons tank!

A quick Google also shows numerous pics of what appear in B&W photos to be single colour Panther tanks.

Gary

The early Panthers( like your D model) were issued during the time the army received its' equipment in a one color base coat. The tins of brown and green paint were issued to the units for application in the field. If the unit got their new tanks and had the time and inclination,then they would apply the cammo pattern to their liking. So a tank with no cammo paint would b very common. It was only later in 1944 that tanks began to be cammo painted at the factory with templates using various 3 color schemes. Sorry,long answer.
J

Here's an example (providing the drawing is accurate of course...)



H.P.

Pretty sure I read that was the case for many of the vehicles arriving at Kursk, the Panthers especially as they were hot off the assembly line.

Probably all of the early Panther ausf D rolled out to the east in mid-1943 wearing their factory-applied dunkelgelb monochrome paint scheme.

The following link should get you to a fairly "famous" pic of a train-load of these dunkelgelb "D" on their way east in 1943 (and, incidentally, one can see various stowage details on these first-production kitties, along with some of square-cut beams for blocking tanks in place on rail flats and later seconded to be in-ditching beams...).

http://ww2images.blogspot.com/2012/12/panther-ausfd-medium-tanks-on-rail-cars.html

There are other pics out on the web which document monochrome dunkelgelb Panthers in the field in 1943 and 1944. As others have stated, the units were supplied with brown and green camo paint (in paste form) to apply as desired. The dunkelgelb was the regulation base-color from Mar 1943, but there was no regulation requirement that other colors needed to actually be applied in early and mid-1943... So units and individual tanks / crew apparently skipped doing so in many cases. And as we also know, some units and crews applied only one camo color, while others applied both, so there were green-on-DG and brown-on-DG and green + brown on DG schemes seen across Russia (and typically some op areas/fronts saw mostly green-on-DG, while Italian Front units apparently favored brown-on-DG schemes).

A straight DG "D" (or "A", for that matter) is a wholly legit option (op area and time-frame not withstanding!).

Bob

Thank you for the replies everyone. I ended up just shooting a three tone scheme onto my panther. I appreciate all the knowledge and pics. Happily modeling