I have an idea for an autumn themed diorama with a Krout halftrack and figures.

I would like to set it in the mid to late fall, my feeling is that by that time the summer camouflages would have either worn off or would have been painted over to fit the new whether and terrain.

The area im looking at is somewhere in Hungary.

Pictures always welcome.

Kody,
By "krout" I'm guessing you mean German? I would not presume to speak on behalf of the German members of the KMN community, and I don't mean to play PC police, but I think that term, while perhaps appropriate to the era you are depicting in your dio, may not be the best choice for getting all of the useful input you would otherwise.

Also, I think he meant Kraut.

Kody K.;

I'll ditto the remarks of prior posters; PLEASE read clearly the message sent about inappropriate language and please try a more respectful tact!

I will try to answer your question as well as I can - focusing only on later-war (1943+) schemes:

Basically, new vehicles were issued to units wearing a basecoat of dunkelgelb. Units and crew were issued two camo colors in a concentrated paste form - a dark green or olivgrun, and a rotbraun / schokoladenbraun - for unit or crew field application. There were guidelines for general approaches to "patterns to be used", but it was expected that units / crew would apply these camo colors to "best suit the local terrain" (and time that they were being applied...) There were no mandated specific spring, summer, or fall schemes - and crew had a lot of leeway as to what would actually be done. Hence the huge non-standardized variation in later-war "tricolor" schemes we German armor fans revel in. (The was a short period from later OCT 1944 when standard dunkelgelb-based tricolor schemes were applied at the factory, and from ca JAN 1945, new vehicles came wearing a olivgrun basecoat with the dunkelgelb and braun applied as camo colors...). There is clear evidence that some vehicles never actually ever received any camo colors over the gelb base... maybe none was available, no time to paint, etc.

Units and crew applied whitewash or white water-based paint over the extant tricolor or gelb basecoat for winter camo. This stuff went on as the first local snows fell, and wore off over the next few months.

Crew are known to have repainted and touched up their camo schemes from time to time, so basically, the tricolor probably didn't ever really "wear off", and it probably didn't change much once it went on (sort of like modern armies, where once that camo scheme is on, crew get to repaint it from time to time - but typically don't create a whole new scheme when repainting - just speaking from "hands-on experience" here! ).

Were I looking for an appropriate scheme for the time and the place, I would search around for pics from that area of operations and the general time-frame and see what was likely to have been seen there. ANY camo scheme can be whitewashed.

Hope this helps!

Bob

Hi Bob, that is really useful info, thanks for sharing.

Rich.