Hi guys,

Some time ago i posted an item about making an M-728 CEV in MASSTER-camo.
It's going to be a model of the 8th infantry 12E stationed in Germany in the seventies.
But what is the correct layout of the markings ?
8-I-12E or 8 12E or 8-12E
in black or white ?

Which one should be correct ?

Gé Hovens

.

Actually Rob, I think that during the period that Ge' is building, the use of the letter "I" for Infantry in the bumper markings, was not done, at least for the two Mech Divisions in 7th Army, the 8th in V Corps, and the 3rd ID in VII Corps. I know it was prescribed during WW II, and is called for now, but I'm pretty sure that we didn't use it during this period.

I have several shots of vehicles from my old unit, (1st Bn, 2nd FA) and our left side numbers were written 8 1F2 (and some as 8-1F2) with no specific notation for Infantry. The two Armored Divisions, (3rd in V Corps and 1st in VII Corps, did however use the ^ symbol to indicate Armored Division. Whether this was a local practice in Europe, or a temporary thing I don't know, but I'm pretty sure about it. I always assumed the "I" wasn't used, since it could be considered a "default" unless otherwise specified, like for the Armored or Airborne Divisions, but don't know that, nor do I have any official pubs which document this.

If somebody has some photos it would be great to know for certain, but I believe what should be on the left side would be 8 12E (or 8-12E), and for sure during this period, the bumper numbers would have been in white letters, not black.


Steve Joyce, if you're out there, do you have any photos from 1/68 Armor from back then?

My apologies for the inaccurate info.

No apologies necessary!!

This particular period is one that's not well documented for some reason. I've done a little bit of searching (not TOO much) and so far, even though I have a few photos, and this was the initial pattern painting scheme adopted in Europe, and was around for at least 4 years, I've not been able to locate any of the illustrations which were used to indicate how this pattern was to be applied, with the exception of the example for the M113 which was cut out from a magazine article and given to me by my dad. There are also a couple of views of an M577 and an M548 in this scheme in the old Squadron M113 in action book.

I've found plenty of examples of the later 4 color scheme and you can find the 3 color scheme which followed, but this one seems hard to locate for some reason.

I know there was an entire circular with the patterns for all the vehicles in service at that time, because that's what we used to chalk off the vehicles and paint them by. I think it was issued by HQ 7th Army, but I've not been able to find a scanned copy of it on line anywhere.

Since this pattern was strictly a "peace-time" pattern (i.e. never went to a shooting war), I suppose that it's not of much interest to very many people, except perhaps those of us who were around those vehicles during that period.

I know since it was my first unit as a nub 2LT, it's why I like modeling it.

.

I'm not sure, it might be.

If this scheme calls for 2 colors to each be about 45% each (a brown and a green), with the sand color and the black each about 5%, this is a later scheme. The version we used had the brown at 34%, sand at 30% and green at 27% (in effect all three at fairly close to the same amount), and the black at 5%. In this scheme the patterns were more "rounded" rather than having long narrow bands.

I remember how surprised we were that there was so much sand color, since we were in Germany (a preview of coming attractions almost 20 years in the future???) But we quickly discovered that the dust from the field was a pretty good match!!

You can see how much more brown and sand these are (and only a few black spotches) compared to the current NATO 3 color which has a lot of green.

Hi guys,

thanks for all the info !

do you know www.panzerbaer.de ?
look under tarnschemen and there you'll find some examples of MASSTER scheme of the seventies.
I've mailed the webmaster to find out if he has any scheme for the M-728 CEV.
otherwise i will use the scheme as indicated on wark's bunker on geocities.
www.geocities.com/wark_on_geo/morecam.htm

Cheers,

Gé

That's the one. One note. The first site indicates that the green should be FS 34079, and the other site says it was FS 34127, which was not used and recommends using FS 34151 instead. I personally believe that a color right between the two FS 34102 is the closest match.



I know that at one point there was an official publication with a lot of vehicles shown. This appears to be a re-creation of a couple of vehicles. Somebody out there must have an old Pub lying around with the actual line drawings for all those vehicles.





Not surprising. My time period was from 72 -77 and there were lots of inconsistencies and changes. Even though the original 4 color scheme called for white bumper numbers, I know that late during my tour, it was not uncommon to see vehicles in the scheme with black ones, and sometime in the late 70's I think the MERDC started to be used, and I'm pretty sure that one called for black bumper numbers. It may be that as that change came in, the Infantry divisions went back to including the "I" which appears to be the practice for everyone now.