Guys,

I've though about how German tanks were painted and a strange idea crossed my mind: should the red-brown primer show up in hard-to-reach areas after the camouflage painting. Let's me explain the idea...

From my experience on shipyards and heavy equipment manufacturing I know that the primer is actually applied at the steel plate manufacturer (not the equipment factory) in order to avoid corrosion during storage. In general primer is reapplied at the equipment manufacter only were needed, like at plate cutting edges and welded beads. Being so, one can expect that the whole tank is red-brown when finished and prior to the painting process.

That's were my thinking wanders: if the final painting is done after the tank is finished them is fair to suppose that some parts were hard to reach (like under the hull and sponsons, the hull wall behind the tracks and weels, etc.) and might be left unpainted as they could not be seen anyway. The idea that came up to me is that we should paint the tank as if it weighted tons (as in real life) and the areas that we can not reach without moving and lifting the tank should be left on primer colours.

All this delusion makes any sense?

Regards,

Antonio Plais

Interesting idea, Antonio!

However, it is also possible that the base colour (say, dark yellow for a Tiger tank) was applied when the hull was assembled, but before the wheels were added? In that case the "hidden" spaces behind the wheels etc would be yellow, but would not get the camoflage that was often added after final assembly.

No doubt we'll here from those who know!

Tom

Interesting idea / question!

I'll offer a tripple of "answers" for your consideration:

First Go: IF you are thinking pre-war and peace-time, and early - mid war period.... every impression I get is that the Germans were nothing if not rather detail-minded and maybe even obsessive in almost everything to do with building (and re-building) their armored vehicles. AND they were not suffering too much disruption of supplies, nor hastening forward with construction (unlike those Russians, who evidently cut some corners and left off the finishing touches in order to get tanks to the front a little faster (no, I am trying to invoke the mythos idea that they drove them out the factory door to battle or anything )). It may be that the Germans took "pride in workmanship" seriously, what with the number of man-hours they put into some of these things like Tigers... I am pretty certain that they did NOT leave any area un-painted - if they could see it and spray at it, it got covered! So, from this, I would suggest that you would NOT see any exposed primer on any of these earlier machines.

Second Go: There was a period in mid-war when the Germans did try out leaving part or all of the crew compartment of tanks and StuG in the primer red... as a time and material-saving play (I think...). This did not last long as the troops clamoured against this. Still, a later mid-war StuG might have primer to be seen inside. I would still say that there would likely be none exposed outside. Those Germans were still not being SLOPPY in their painting - just not doing it inside the closed compartments.

Third Go: Late in the war, things MAY have deteriorated some, and I would suppose that there was some case where tanks were assembled and left partially in-primer - with some camo colors being applied (by the factory, per orders) over this but maybe not completely covering the tank. This seems to be also the likely period when areas under sponsons and such may well have escaped final painting... Evidence in the way of formal documentation and records is, ISFAIK, scant... but many late-war modelers seem to like this idea and have acted accordingly....

Being a modest fan of Panzer 46s, I entertained myself that '46 could have seen more this sort of thing. Again, no evidence nor data, but... "logic" for what little it's worth in the case!

Did an E-10 back in '09 - I went with the primer-under-sponsons mode. Is it "right"? Heck, it's a Panzer 46 and there ain't anything likely RIGHT about it! But I did think doing so would be cool



So, maybe consider the period your tank is in, and go from there!

Bob

This is a hotly debated topic, and I come down on the side of "it just depends." It would seem that official painting instructions under went some changes in Aug to Oct '44 that allowed some simplifications and economizing on materials (paint) and labor at the factories while simplifying the issue of combat-ready vehicles to the troops.

The most radical of these instrucitons came out around Oct '44 and instructed the factories to apply the camouflage colors (dark yellow, green, and brown) directly and sparingly to the primer red. So, my interpretation would be that there was possibly quite a bit of primer red "peeking" out from areas that didn't receive the cammo colors. Still, the factories were probably more thorough than less so.

Up to that point, I think that the factories did a pretty thorough job with the Panzer gray or darly yellow base coats while leaving the green and brown to the troops in the field. So, prior to about Sep '44, there was probably very little primer red that actually showed on completed tanks.

Here's a link to some factory Panther photos that show various assembly lines at different times. I think that some of the early Panther Ausf. A photos show that the factory workers were actually painting the dark yellow base coats (appearently by brush) during assembly in order to get the dark yellow into all the nooks and crannies. Also note that Zimmerit was colored dark yellow, so it formed part of the base coat color when it was being applied.

http://www.rctankwarfare.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4855

At any rate, I tend to allow red primer to show in as many places on my models as seems appropriate for the time period when the subject was manufactured. I believe that it adds to the visual interest, and I'm willing to push the "historical accuracy" envelope to achieve this extra interest when practical.

My .02 cents...

Thanks for all these deep considerations...I think you are right when saying that the sponsons undersides should be painted anyway (as the weels and tracks can be installed after painting).

As I'm assembling a Tiger I deployed to the Kursk battle I'll do a complete painting job, maybe leaving only the hull underside on primer colour. I'm trying to find pictures of destroyed tanks upside down the see if I can have some clue about the underside painting color.

I'll post progress pictures at the Tiger Campaing forum.

Regards,

Antonio Plais
Brazilian modeller