Hi everyone.

I'm building a King Tiger Porsche Turret. I have a few questions about painting the inside of the hatches (hull and turret). Would they have been painted in the base color or buff? If base color, what brand would you use and would it be green or yellow? Would you had paint these pieces or airbrush them (especially the hull hatches seeing as they wouldn't be visible).

Thank you and have a wonderful day.

Be well.

Alex

Alex,

The basic "rule of thumb" for painting the interiors of hatches that open outward is to paint them the same color as the factory external color.

There are exceptions to every rule, but in the absence of research to the contrary, this "rule of thumb" will hold true in almost all cases.

So, for your King Tiger with Porsche turret, the factory exterior camouflage color was dark yellow (sometimes called Panzer yellow or by its German name - Dunkel Gelb), so the insides of the hatches should also be this same color. Brown and olive green were applied in the field by the using units to enhance the camouflage according to local conditions and the unit commander's instructions. However, for simplicity, the hatches were probably closed when this was done, so the insides would have probably not been camouflaged with brown and or green.

(Again, there are exceptions to this rule and references should be your guide if you're concerned with accuracy.)

In regards to painting technique, I personally airbrush as much as I can, and this include parts and details that I add later (hatches usually included in this). However, that's just me.

For small parts that I'm finishing separately, I usually use a toothpick with a bit of tape reverse-rolled on its end to hold the parts for airbrushing. If it's necessary to paint both sides of the part, I wait until the first side is dry, then turn it over and paint the other side. I stick these "toothpicked" parts into a piece of Styrofoam to hold them up while they dry.

(This same method is what I use to hold parts while I do any detail painting by hand, too.)

There's no reason why you can't hand paint or paint your hatches with an airbrush. The only thing that matters here is what you're most comfortable doing. If you have more skill hand brushing, then that's probably what you should do. On the other hand, if you're comfortable with the airbrush or you're ready to expand your airbrushing skills, then that's certainly an option.

I personally use mostly Tamiya acrylic paints applied by airbrush for base coats and camouflage, and Tamiya makes a color XF-60 Dark Yellow that I would use as the basis for the factory camouflage if I was building the same subject - a King Tiger with Porsche turret.

In my opinion, the Tamiya paints are only suitable for airbrushing, but again, opinions and techniques very, and some modelers do get good results hand-brushing Tamiya. If you want to hand-brush Tamiya, one of these guys will have to chime in with advice.

For airbrushing, I reduce Tamiya's flat paints (the "XF" series) about 60:40 paint to thinner. I use a half-and-half mix of Tamiya X-20A thinner and lacquer thinner as the reducer. I also custom mix the dark yellow to lighten it up usually with Tamiya Deck Tan to suit my tastes and weathering techniques.

There are many other brands and colors that can be used for this basic German Panzer Yellow other than Tamiya, both acrylics and enamels. There are as many opinions on the best colors and brands to use as there are model builders, and entire threads are often devoted to arguing the finer points and opinions of German Panzer Yellow and factory and field painting methods. If you want to know more about that, you can spend hours, if not days, simply reading what's been posted on line, not to mention what's been written in books.

If you know what specific paint brands you have available or prefer to use, it might be helpful to ask targeted questions about techniques for using your preferred brand.

HTH,

Base Colour. I like Humbrol 94 for dark yellow, the tamiya product is too dark and too green

Thanks for the great answers.

Where I'm confused is this: some of the KTs with the Porsche turret look like they have a green base coat with red brown stripes painted in thick bands bordered by a narrow band of dunkelgelb. I was always under the impression that dunkelgelb was the base coat yet why waste the paint. If green was the base coat, this leads me to want to paint the hatches green yet?????

Also, I read online that these intricate camo schemes were painted in the factory using stencils (for lack of a better word). Furthermore, to add to my confusion, I read online that the individual paints were sprayed directly over the primer as opposed to painting the entire tank in the base coat? If this is true, then would the hatches then have been sprayed in what ever color was being sprayed over that particular portion of the tank.

It's all very confusing.

Thanks and Happy Holidays.

Be well.

Alex

Alex,

The questions you're asking have entire books and probably thousands of pages of on-line posts written about them. Many of the details are still open for debate and interpretation. However, the basics are fairly well-established. In a nutshell:

In the immediate pre-war and initial war period, the German army used a 2-color gray and brown camouflage system. This system was used until just before the invasion of France when the system was changed to just gray. However, there was some overlap from when the change was ordered and full compliance by units re-painting their vehicles to eliminate the brown (if this was even done by all of the units affected).

In 1943, the German army changed from factory painted uniform gray (Panzer gray) to factory painted uniform dark yellow. The dark yellow vehicles were issued with red (sometimes called chocolate) brown and olive green paints.

The intent was for units to use the green and brown paint to camouflage their vehicles according to the requirements of the local area and the unit commander's desires. Often this "field" camouflage effort was left to the preferences of the crews and / or unit maintenance personnel (resulting in a wide variety of patterns within the unit) and sometimes unit commanders issued very detailed instructions (resulting in fairly uniform camouflage across a unit).

Note that plain gray vehicles could be, at the unit commander's direction and within available resources, repainted with camouflage patterns using any of the three new colors. Some plain gray vehicles were repainted, but from the photographic evidence, it appears that most were not.

Your King Tiger with Porsche turret was produced during this period in the German camouflage time-line. It was manufactured with an overall plain dark yellow exterior and the receiving unit would have been responsible to pattern paint the camouflage using either (or both) olive green and red brown.

In about Aug-Sep '44, there was a change to this process whereby the factories were instructed to camouflage pattern paint their tanks (and some other AFV's) before delivering them to the army. The intent was mainly to ensure that units were receiving vehicles that were completely camouflaged rather than being forced (by time and other operational constraints) to employing plain dark yellow vehicles. This directive also saved some material resources (by conserving paint) and reduced the logistical load (by eliminating the need to issue camouflage paint with new vehicles).

Coinciding with this directive that the factories do the camouflage pattern painting, vice the receiving units, there were a number of specific camouflage patterns that were included or were in addition to the directive. These factory specified painting instructions are the source of patterns like the "Ambush" patterns seen on some tanks and Panzerjaegers.

One of the details of the general factory directives was to conserve paint by not painting the entire vehicle in dark yellow first followed by the green and brown, but to only paint each portion of the specified pattern in its final intended color (either dark yellow, red brown or olive green). This portion of the instruction is the source of the debates about the use of primer red (brown) as a camouflage color and other contentious issues.

By the last months of the war, we find that some factories are forced to interpret the finishing directives to eliminate some colors in short supply or otherwise change from the standard three colors to other schemes. As far as I know, actual official directives instructing green or brown based patterns have not been discovered by researchers and most opinions about this period are based on photo interpretations and are subject to much debate.

HTH,

Thank you for the information. So, if I understand, even the paint job on the tank I'm posting a picture of below (spring/summer of 1944) would have had dunkelgelb as its base coat and would have been camouflaged in the field. That's pretty impressive (and pretty cool).

Thanks.

Alex

http://www.worldwar2aces.com/kingtiger19.jpg

Exactly.

Without getting into specific dates and order numbers, overall green was ordered replace dark yellow around December '44, but probably didn't take effect (if at all!) until Spring '45. All Porsche turret KT's were built and painted long before that date, and any Porsche KT looking like it is base coated green probably just has a lot of green paint on. Dark yellow was instituted as the new base color in spring '43 because it blended in better in the wheat fields and steppes of Russia, where the major actions were taking place. As the war progressed and the battles were now in western and central Europe, the landscape also changed, becoming more forested, so increased amounts of green was used in camo painting to the point where OKH (or whoever) decided green was to be the new yellow. When unsure of the actual base color, check the road wheels. If they haven't been camo painted then whatever color they are is the base color of the vehicle.

Thank you for the answer. I have looked at some photo references and it seems the wheels are predominantly dark yellow. It's as you wrote, with the foresty of France and Western Europe, a heavy green camouflage was ideal for German AFVs during the war. Happy New Year 2014. Alex