I've always painted the bottom of the hull. Today I was painting the bottom of a Tamiya Hetzer, and my son asked, "Why are you painting there? No one sees it." That got me thinking whether to paint inconspicuous areas of a model. What about you?

Chris

Yes, I always paint the bottom of the hull, and as I usually make German vehicles, I paint them in red primer. I suspect that the Germans, being logical types, would realise that camo paint on an area which, as your son observed, would never be seen, would be a waste of paint.

Regards

Rob

The undersides of vehicles are not usually cammo painted. They are usually painted in the overall topcoat color though. Primer is actually pourous and will allow rust to form if it is not sealed by a topcoat.

A couple modern examples; Abrams with fully painted undersides.



A Tiger with fully painted underside; hard to see but it is painted, not primer.

That's correct, no primer protects metal. It just provides a layer for the paint to grab, and can be used to tint the overlying base color. The uniform color of the primed surface helps to regulate color consistency of the overlying paint as well. A sealer can be used on it's own or added to a primer, but I don't think that was common or even available over half a century ago. First and foremost you paint to protect the metals from oxidation, beyond that reasons are aesthetic and vary in practicality.

I'll go ahead and quote my post from T-L on exactly this same question! This is a sort of recurrent question and worth hitting on for all of us armor builders, and not just German AFV fans.

[quote]That's an interesting question, at least IMO!

Keeping our focus on "tanks" - heavy metal boxes on tracks - as versus automotive vehicles with bodies placed onto frames and lower - unit tubs (cars, trucks, halftracks soft and armored), where we know much of German industrial practice followed commercial practices - black enamel frames, etc....

I am pretty sure that almost no tanks left factories, at least until pretty late on in the war, wearing only primer on most any exposed outer side, but this is only my supposition based on looking at a few pics, being around discussions of military industrial practices over many years, and thinking about things like the much-vaunted thoroughness of the Germans in so much of what they (technologically speaking) do. "Slip-shod" and "corner-cutting" have rarely been faults assigned to German industry or manufacturing!

My guess is that the undersides were painted in the factory base-coat of the period - so 1937 - early '43 saw panzer bottoms wearing dunkelgrau, and from Mar 1943, most commonly dunkelgelb.

I would also feel pretty sure that older tanks which were repainted at Nibelungenwerke or by rear-area shops (including beutepanzer) were probably repainted on visible sides and under fenders, but less likely under the hull - that would be taking things rather further for something only a hapless guy getting driven over would likely ever see.

Aside from a few images folks have seen and posted in various places over the years, there seem very few production images which allow us to get a good look at finished bottoms - but those few I have seen do more suggest and support "painted" then "left in primer".

It may be "instructional" for this query to look at other country's practices - what did we (the US) do?, UK?, Sov Russia? during the war, and also see what we do today. Best I know, we paint all sides during assembly.

In any case, those bottoms rapidly became earth and scraped metal and rust all combined... probably something of what most modelers do. The original surface - be it primer or basecoat color, would not survive much intact for very long!

Just my opinion, of course![quote]

I was pretty much speaking about WWII German in above - as that was the focus of the T-L question.

The general argument applies to all tank manufacturers - it seems frankly odd to think that folks would leave the new production vehicle unpainted on its bottom - even though "yes, few or nobody will actually see that bottom". Crawl under the next Caterpillar tractor or other heavy metal you find and you'll see that it was fully-painted - just as that upside-down Abrams, etc.

For what it's worth: "naked rot-oxide primer" was probably a rare-rare thing, even late in WWII. Acceptance standards surely mandated that vehicles would arrive from the producer completely-equipped and fully-painted.

And Joe Q. has supplied examples in this thread of the modern US practice...

Bob