What paint color can I use for German Tank Barrel color..you know what I mean?
I seen pics of barrels being a dark color , black? Some times red oxide? Can someone tell me which colors I can use?

98% of the time, the barrel was the same color as the rest of the tank. It's we modelers who insist on the alternate colored barrel despite its rarity in real life.

That being said, barrels were painted in a heat resistant black lacquer, then oversprayed in dunkelgelb or dark gray. Never in oxide red.

Howdy Y'all
Thanks for the info and a good question. I always felt inadequate because I painted my barrels the same color as the rest of the tank.
Take care,
Don "Lakota"

A contentious subject... Like the X-files, you just have to believe.





There are other photos out there, especially many in B&W of dark yellow tanks rolling out of factory settings with barrels that are clearly much, much darker than the base Dunkel Gelb.

Seems the consensus, such as it is, is that the manufacturer's of the gun barrels (as sub-contractors) delivered the barrels to the vehicle assembly plants with a gray, heat resistant primer. The vast majority of tanks probably got this covered over by the base color in use at the time.

However, some, probably mostly later war, tanks were shipped without the gun barrels receiving the base color over the gray. For example, it's reasonable that some tanks that may have been assembled and painted, but absent their main guns. The guns were then mated to them as soon as the guns were delivered to the assembly plant and then the tanks were shipped without being repainted.

The situation with factory camouflage painting after Sep-Oct '44 is still not completely understood. Instructions to apply camouflage colors directly over the primers without first overall base coating in dark yellow could have resulted in some tanks being shipped with gray barrels with just spots of brown and green (and maybe dark yellow) camouflage on them.

Also, it quite possible that replacement gun barrels were shipped to the field from the barrel manufacturers in their original gray primer.

(The Stug III barrel above is a likely candidate for a replacement barrel.)

Anyways, there's some room for plausible historical variations (at least IMO).

Color photos of WW II German vehicles are rare but they do exist (as Mike's post shows). Here's two more showing panzer IVs with the dark grey-black barrels:

I had assumed that the darker barrels were spares or replacements that were still painted dark grey. I'm not sure where I got that idea from, maybe I just saw the contrast and assumed. Can anyone more knowledgeable than myself tell me if that is a plausible explanation or not?

As stated in the above posts the dark colored barrels are in their factory primer. Mike noted that some may have left the factory like that, but I believe the majority were replacements done in the field.

Like any other gun, the barrels had a limited number of rounds that could be fired through them before bore erosion affected the accuracy. The higher the velocity, the faster this occurred. An example - A Panther firing 39/42 (925ms) had a life of around 2000 rounds, but when it used the faster 41/42 (1120ms) that dropped to only 800 rounds.

So what is a suggested brand/color to do this grey primer? I am assuming this is not the same color as 'Panzer Grey'.

Cheers

Robbie: your guess is as good as ours. I'd say take a look at the Stug pulled out of that Russian bog and approximate that. I'm sure you have blacks and greys in your paint rack... no one has researched this. You're free to go for it.

To me mix a little gun metal or burnt metal to good ole panzer grey...

Cheers

I don't see any metallic hues in those barrels. Remember, ti was to be a protective lacquer coat. No reason why a paint manufacturer would add metallic pigment to something for that purpose.

That's my opinion. I'd add black to dunkelgrau, personally.

I'll agree with Roy's assessment, it looks like a very dark matte grey to me.

This is a nice question and, as far as I know, there are not so many documents about...

I know that the barrels were primered with a heat resistant primer (dark gray or black). Then sent to the destinations.

Therefore, when replaced in the field, especially under hurried situations, the replacement ballels can be seen without the normal base coat.

I would like to check better my books because the matter is interesting...


Cheers

Giovanni

You all might be right. To me it looks like the untreated steel in the yards at the steel mill (my step dad worked there). I can see what you mean by the very dark grey but the pic with the Stug to me has a slight metallic (not like metal flake metallic) tinge to it. I really have never been good at judging colors which is why I hang out here.

Cheers

Regarding that StuG barrel, it appears to have some remnants of Dunkelgelb (or maybe rust) around the base. Could be the heat from a lot of firing discolored or burned the paint? Is enough heat actually generated to be able to do that?

In regards to the Stug III, what you're perceiving as variations in the gray color on the gun barrel are likely remnants of its original green and subsequent winter white paint camouflage. Note the white factory stenciling on the side of the barrel, too (with the 5-digit part number).

This particular Stug III was recovered from a bog in Russia in near pristine condition. It had apparently been abandoned (perhaps stuck) during the winter. (There are a couple of smaller caliber AT round on the front, too.) As the ice and snow melted, this Stug III sunk in the mash and was completely submerged. Presumably, the cold and lack of oxygen in the muck preserved it until it was recovered.

When it was recovered, it was still in its winter white wash camouflage. However, before it was white washed, its factory dark yellow received over-sprayed green spots. At sometime, its tactical numbers were changed.

After being recovered, it sat in a open area on display where the remnants of the white wash slowly and literally washed away. The over paint dark yellow on the original tactical number also faded over time exposing it number underneath the new number.

All of these changes have been documented in several walk around photo shoots over years, starting from when it was recovered to the last shots when the breakers tore it apart for spare parts.

The photo I posted above is one of the last ones that I know of. It was taken as the breakers were pulling the engine compartment components out of the vehicle.

I'm am fully convinced that the gray color seen on the gun barrel is completely original to the Stug, as are the green camouflage and tactical numbers.

Whether this is a replacement gun barrel or the barrel originally installed at the factory remains debatable, though. The remnants of the field applied green camouflage on the barrel suggests to me that this is the original factory installed gun barrel, but it's not really possible to say that with total certainty.