Bill Cross reviews Devil Over the Atlantic's Pre-War German Camouflage Paint set.



Link to Item

If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

First of all, I have no problem with paint tinkering, building the better paint, making a better color, color research, I encourage it.

However, proclamations made to impressionable minds, I do have a problem with.

Reading through the review,

1) Photography. I see this over and over and over again. Everyone tries to play the camera/film techno card to their advantage. When the photo proves their point, the equipment was working perfectly fine that day. When the photo disproves their point, there was a problem with the photography equipment that day, the photo color has changed, the lighting was this..., the soil color was that..., the developer was a hack & totally messed up. I research American colors, and I see this over & over. WW2 OD, WW2 camo colors, Marine Green, Vietnam OD, etc.

There are photos both color & B&W which show the grey/brown color very clearly in Poland'39 & France'40. And there are even more which do not.

2) Sources. One secondary source is used; Jentz has done great things, but this does not make him a color/specification expert. The primaries are in Frieburg. What needs to be done is for someone to go there & read what units were doing. This is what Zaloga does for American colors, and even he has been wrong. And he uses an archive a hop down the road; which wasn't razed during the war, with records written in his native tongue. And even he makes mistakes. That should illustrate how complex this is.

Why is Chory's book with real pigmented paint chips not mentioned? Or his opinions? (That solid grey was the prevalent color in both Poland & France)

3) The July 1941 order. Did the Geman Quartermaster wake up one day & decide to change the painting schemes the next day? Or were there problems implementing the orders in Poland & France, & thus decided to make it official- grey only. The order stated that it's intention was 'save paint', and this is just after Germany captured all the French ochre mines. Strange. They want to save paint after capturing all that French ochre.

4) "Most experts now agree..". Experts? Who?

5) 1942. All factory fresh equipment in Spring 1942 appear to have been factory painted in light colors. Units rebuilding in France, units in DAK (of course), and units in the Ukraine offensive, Blue. And then in later summer they went back to grey as exhibited by the Tiger battalions & new GD panzer battalion. May I see the orders for those directions? Oh, I guess we are missing something then.

6) "we're still trying to persuade some of you to give up..". Why? Mistakes are now being uncovered routinely on American colors. Do you think we know more about German colors?

I give the highest respect to the likes of authors Dana Bell of the Smithsonian & Charles Lemons of the Patton Museum. It is only they & a few like them that have the guts to admit that we dont' know everything, but this is our best *interpretation*, not necessarily the absolute answer.

Grey/Brown was used. That is for sure. The question, unanswered at this time, is how common was it.

Mark,

I appreciate your passion, but do not agree with you on a number of points. It's also unclear whether you are disputing just the pre-war and Early-war color scheme of Dunkelbraun Nr.45 and Dunkelgrau Nr.46 promulgated in July, 1937, or the feuersicher Buntfarbenanstrich scheme this paint set provides. I presume the former, so I would ask you to perhaps start another thread about that and not hijack this one, which is about the paint used for the decade from 1927-1937.

Regarding photography, I made a living for a number of years off of photography, so I know the difference between a coated and an uncoated lens, the various film grades and how they've improved over the years, etc. I'm confident that the Germans would not have repainted vehicles painted bi-color gray & brown camo to just gray until there was an order to do so. I would never stipulate that NO vehicle was painted just gray because of a $%#@-up, but I'm confident that in Poland and France, the vehicles were brown and gray. Your mileage may differ.

Why is it important to get modelers to accept that? Because it's simply been easier to go with Panzer gray for generations rather than do the work. Now that work is being done. I welcome those who continue to work on this subject, and history has an alarming way of turning up answers we didn't expect as more information is uncovered. It's not a question of guts, either, just someone with the time and resources to run this down. Those of us who still work for a living have to accept the verdict of evidence SO FAR TO DATE, and for me, that's a bi-color camo in the Early War period.



I am not familiar with the book, but have added it to my "wish list" of items to purchase.


I don't see any point in playing "my source will kick your source's ass" but I was looking through German Half-Tracks of World War Two v. 2 for another thread. I can look for more, but I doubt I'm going to convince you.

But thanks for dropping in, your contribution is appreciated.

The hijack allegation is out of line. I commented on your post by your invitation.

One item I would like to point out that applies to any afv painting topic is that vehicles are repainted all the time. The orders you quote are just how HQ would like it to be done, when it gets done, but doesn't provide for the frequency.

The primary, secondary, and tertiary reasons for vehicle painting are corrosion, corrosion, corrosion, respectively. Color isn't critical, and pattern even less so.

For example, in the best of times, with superior postwar coatings, American tanks sitting around doing nothing in Germany got a minimum of one repaint per year. Usually two. When they were out in the elements, it was higher. I mention this because it is not safe to assume that a Panzer painted at a factory in 1938, was not repainted before it went into Poland, or France in 1940. Repainting occurs all the time, which is why one must maintain a critical viewpoint when photographic evidence appears to contradict high level orders. And repainting is subject to paint availability.

If one just want to rely on a high level order, Hitler ordered Paulus to take Stalingrad. We're still waiting for that one!

Mark, this is a review about pre-war German camo paint. Your comments are valued and I acknowledged as much, but you have hijacked the thread and turned it into something else. It would be nice to get things back on the subject of pre-war camo and whether this is a good set of paints or not.

As to whether the Wehrmacht followed directives or not, I prefer to follow the evidence and not conjecture about what might or might not have happened in individual divisional motor pools. Switching from a tricolor camo to a bi-color to a single color (gray) makes perfect, logical sense. Going from tricolor to single color on the whims or exigencies of individuals is chaos. If that's how you want to imagine it happened, then fine.

Hi Bill:

I followed with interest DOA's early work on developing hobby paints and was looking forward to giving them a try. Just before I was ready to place an order, I noticed the paint line had been sold to a company in the UK. With shipping costs and the conversion rate etc. I immediately lost interest in giving them a try as I was not dissatisfied enough with the hobby paints readily available here in the US to pay the price to acquire DOA's paints. I also noticed DOA/UK was searching for a US based distributor. Any word on any developments on that front?

Keith

Keith, that's a valid point (and one pertaining to the review, thanks!): paints are often very personal. I, for example, tend to use Tamiya and Model Master acrylics just because I'm used to them. The fellow who pioneered DOA wanted to go in a different direction.
[quote0 I also noticed DOA/UK was searching for a US based distributor. Any word on any developments on that front?[/quote]
I don't currently have any information on that regard. Ordering from the UK DOES involve some expense, but in this case, there is no alternative to this set unless you want to experiment and make your own.

I'll still believe pure grey in this time period when a clean & clear photos show it-there are a few, but now I will give the benefit of the doubt to all the dusty stuff.

Mark, there was a very long thread on this topic some months back (perhaps someone has the link or can look it up?). We examined a bunch of photographs, and the only convincing ones showed two-tone camo. The ones purporting to be solid gray were either covered in dust, back-lit or had such poor resolution that you could argue the point either way.

So it comes down, to my thinking, that the Germans were more likely the follow the path of least resistance: conform to the regs and repaint only when required. That would seem to indicate tri-color gradually giving way to two-tone until the Summer after France when everyone was required to go over to sold gray.

Your mileage may vary, but unless you can produce conclusive evidence, arguing that "it might have been" doesn't really get us anywhere.

Bill, I am agreeing with you

Hi Bill, here are some other things to mull over that show or support exceptions to the rule

Thanks, Mark, let me have a look at the text. The color photos are certainly very interesting.

Hi, Mark.

I read this through rather quickly, and it's very interesting, especially as it talks about the various materials, both oil- and water-soluble, used in German paints, and how the new military colors would be useful in civilian life (it's 1942 and Germans at this point were only beginning to grasp the fact that the war would drag on to defeat). The writer talks about the quick adoption of these materials in the North Africa (Tropen) and on the Eastern Front where the "atmospheric conditions" require special qualities to resist wear.

Also fascinating is the debate about the binding materials for the pigments (both alkyd and vinyl) and methyl cellulose or a derivative. My high school chemistry is waaaay out of date, so I can't comment on what the writer is saying, other than that the Army was looking for paints that would hold up under extreme weather conditions, including temperatures of -40 degrees. Without getting into the details, there is also concern for the application process and the way the paints will cooperate with the various ways the troops apply the paints (an indication, if we needed any, that most camo was applied in the field).

The second section seems boilerplate about the importance of the paint industry to the national war effort, with some examples of how poorly-painted equipment went to crap from rust. Interestingly to our discussion, there is no mention I noticed of the importance of camouflage, and that paint was important to the author as a means of preserving valuable equipment, whether tanks, submarines, airplanes or even news apparatus.

I may have missed something in my cursory reading, as the clarity of the reproduction made it hard on my eyes, but I appreciate your sharing this with us.

Great news indeed - finally a set of paints suitable for the Reichswehr/Condor Legion period - excellent !

Hi Bill,

Great review, and a very useful set! It opens up a whole new world of possibilities for pre-1938 German vehicles.
I recently found these two links over on ML - check out the boxes in real Reichswehr Buntfarbenanstrich -
http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/showthread.php?t=463002
And -
http://www.panzerwerk-schulz.de/categories.php?cat_id=34&sessionid=48686d8eb3d23259347443a57507afbb

Stirling, thanks, I agree completely. The Reichswehr Period, I like that.

Matt, thanks so much, your praise means a lot to me. I think this set could be the genesis of a lot of new pre-war German armor. Perhaps AMPS or "Mosquitocon" could take this up with a category? "Best Armor Between the Wars"?

Probably already have, I should shut up until I find out.