Thinking of adding an Air Recognition panel to a kit.

The ones I'm thinking of are the 4ft x 2ft rectangle w one side fluorescent orange and the other side pink.

I know we had them in the mid eighties, but wondering when they came out.

Thinking about adding one to an original style M60 to give the overall OD some color. This tank would be set in about 1970 - 1975 Germany.

Anyone know what circa these started being used?

The concept goes back to WWII. I think Desert Storm is when they really started to get noticed. No idea if the concept was commonly used in the 70's.

You might Google 'Reforger' or research military exercises in Europe and see if you find any photos.

If your talking about the VS-17, the one sided one has been in service since WWII. I'm not sure when the two sided ones came into use.

I trained with them back in the 80's.

I've studied all the Tankograd Reforger books, as well as the Tankograd MASSTER MERCD and DualTex books to get reference of context for the original M60 but I'm not seeing any air recognition panels before the '80's . I do find that prior to camo (MASSTER) the all OD vehicles have a mixture of large white stars, small white stars and large black stars while some have none at all. I know the small white star on the roof of the turret was supposed to be for air recognition, nut that's about it.

I'm guessing that these panels probably weren't used in early to mid '70's but hoping to find someone that might know for sure.

Like I said, I just wanted to add a splash of color to the vehicle. Maybe I'll have to have some figures drinking pink cans of Tab or something !

I have a color photo of a VS-17 panel on an IDF Centurion in '73.

I've got a real WW2 dated one on our M16 halftrack.