I’ve stumbled across a photo of an M18 Hellcat which appears to have its rear engine deck painted a lighter color than the Olive Drab which seems to adorn the rest of the vehicle.

Can anyone tell me any more about this practice? I assume it’s for air recognition purposes – but does anyone know when this practice was adopted and what shade was used for the lighter color?

See photo here: http://www.ww2incolor.com/us-armor/cook_44italy.html

Thanks,
Noah

http://www.ww2incolor.com/us-armor/cook_44italy.html

Not the engine deck, just the rear hull sides. It was a unit marking, noting platoon and gun number. The panel was white, numerals black. There's a restored one near Portland that currently wears that scheme.
Greg

The 805th TD Battalion was the only unit to use Hellcats in the Italian campaign, according to various sources including Osprey title 'M18 Hellcat tank destroyer, 1943-97' (Steven J. Zaloga, Jim Laurier) - this book features one b/w photo and a colour illustration of an M18 from this unit, which shows the number in black on white, but also with the Tank Destroyer emblem painted on the hull sides forward of the turret (roundabout where the white star is on the photo). '

LINK - the photo below is on page 24 and is indistinct, but suggests to me at least that the white area also covers the engine deck and hull rear plate, even though this is not shown as such on the illustration.


The photo you have suggests a modification or perhaps early implementation (prototype?) of this scheme.

Looking at the photo of the happy xmas crew, there is a very obvious difference in tone between the white star and the background panel on the rear sides, which would suggest that the panel is not white.
It's not OD either, so perhaps tan or even yellow..?

Also looking at tonal variations, it looks like the panel colour does extend across both the engine deck and the hull rear plate - my guess is that this was a late war recognition device to stop slower advancing units from sending one up the back end of the M18s...

I don't know if that helps any...

regards
acav