I am building two models now, one is a Stug G III with waffle zimm and the other is a jagdpanzer IV command vehicle, both in a winter camo scheme. (these are late war tanks, 1944-45)

I was wondering about their on vehicle equipment (OVM)- did the German tankers just paint over things like the jack, the gun cleaning rod, the fire extinguisher, etc.with the white paint
or did they paint around the OVM?
Thanks.
-Felix

I have seen pictures with everything painted, but if the tools were used, the white wash would come off pretty easy.

Hi Felix ...I was looking through a few pictures and it seems like most of the time the tools will be painted white but since the paint was not meant to be permanent it wore off when the tools were used ..The gun cleaning rod seems to not stay white very long ..You can also see in pictures where spare wheels and other equipement might have been replaced after the white wash making for some interesting schemes ..

Rick

Felix;

Hi! This brings up a rather cool and interesting "historical" property of later-war German armor - many pictures show that crew, who were generally responsible for doing the camo painting both summer and winter, evidently freely painted over most OVM with whatever camo coat(s) were being applied. So we see Pz IV and KingTigers with spare track links, jacks and jack-blocks, tow-cables and other stuff variably camo-painted. What's interesting is that some of this stuff may have been replacements and not in the original base-coat color, but would get camo stripes. And if these items were not say base dunkelgelb, they might get painted with a green or brown strip and included in the scheme, but with some part(s) other colors (or wood, such as for shovels, etc.)?

And certainly, as folks have already mentioned, the whitewash was a temp application and probably rapidly wore off. This could be an opportunity to show one tool worn and stripped of most white, while other bits remain much more in keeping with the vehicle coat status! One might also consider "adding on an item scavenged from another vehicle", or a new replacement among other more-used stuff!

I think our general modeling habit has been to paint the tools as if they were whatever colors tools were - whether its summer or winter! And likewise tow cables, etc. - rarely ever acknowledging that these were often painted (but often working hard to depict being dirty and / or rusty...) I know I'm guilty of this. But now this question has come up, I'm going to be thinking about this in some near-future builds...!

Bob

Thanks guys! I was just talking with a friend about this as well, and we pretty much were saying what you all did - if you're in a war and don't have a lot of time to be accurate, you're pretty much going to do an okay job of painting it white and move on, not worrying to much about over spray, say, on the rubber of the wheels, the jack blocks, etc. I also believe your correct with the paint chipping off rather quickly when the wheels hit the tracks, the road, the wind, the rain, etc.
Thanks for your feedback, it's really helpful.