Does anyone have photos or references for a late war Panther that has gray with green over spray camo scheme? I know by the end of the war they where using whatever paint was left and in the urban fighting the gray might have been used. I have one reference, but was wondering if this really existed.

Nope ..it never existed ...what you might be seeing would be a panther base painted in dark green with redbrown camo .

Rick

Hi Guys,
Actually, the old gray paint was authorized for use if nothing else was available. Take a look in Tom Jentz's King Tiger book. He does state it, so it's not COMPLETELY impossible. Unlikely, yes, but not impossible.
Regards,
Georg

Yeah, it's an urban legend. Dunkelgrau was stopped February 18, 1943 and it was all long out of production and gone by then. I agree with Richard, it's probably the Olivgrun base color ordered on November 20, 1944 that you're seeing.

Base color for all German tanks from December, 1944 was supposed to be Olivgrun (Olive Green), with Dunkelgelb (Dark Yellow) and/or Rotbraun (Red Brown) disruptive bands applied at the factory, not in the field. If Dunkelgelb was unavailable, factories were authorized to use Dunkelgrau (Dark Gray) as a disruptive color (NOT as the base color), but it was ordered to be conserved, as it was in short supply. In reality, this probably never happened, since the gray paint had been out of production and out of the supply chain for two years.
Late war photos of Panther G models issued to 11th Panzer Division show a dark base with a single, lighter disruptive color, usually interpreted as Dunkelgelb over Olivgrun. However, it looks a bit dark to my eye, and Hilary Louis Doyle reported in his 1995 article in Military Modelling Magazine that Panther factories were ordered in 1945 to use Rotbraun as the disruptive color. No mention was made of Dunkelgelb in these orders, but he assumes that it could have been used if it was available (and there are other late Panthers seen with very narrow bands of the lightest color, presumably Dunkelgelb, accentuating the bands of a darker shade, presumably Rotbraun). So, for the late war two-tone scheme, I'm kind of a heretic, as I think it was Rotbraun over Olivgrun, though I'll admit that the Dunkelgelb scheme is more attractive on a model. With only black and white photos to examine, it's finally just a judgement call.