A link that might be of interest to you.

Bellman
The Story of a Stuart


regards
Pete

I have seen this article before. Thanks for bringing back to my attention.
The author certainly has a valid argument. And I personally do agree with him and his color choices.
Thanks again pete.

Many thanks for posting this piece!
A very interesting and helpful article.

Cheers,
Garry

Having read the article,I thought it made sense and painted my Honey accordingly.
Maybe I'm missing something but it seems to me that the blue/grey colour would have made the vehicles rather conspicuous! In my personal opinion the slate grey/light stone is a better paint scheme. If anyone else has any thoughts I'd be pleased to hear them.
regards
Pete

Ps If i can persuade my cheap old digicam to work properly I'll attempt to post a couple of pics somewhere

"The current colour offering from Academy seems to be based on colour drawings that were published in Fine Scale Modeler in November 1997."

While this color scheme may have appeared as mentioned, the use of blue in this camo scheme dates back at least to the original LRDG Chevy kit by Tamiaya in the mid-1970's and was referenced either by Matchbox or Hasegawa on their 1/72 scale M3 offerings about the same time and certainly before FSM was first published in 1982.

The use of blue was mentioned as a useful color either in the Tamiya LRDG instruction sheet or in an article on this sceme in the ancient Military Modeler magazine from Challenge Publications, again well before the 1997 refrerence date.

Additionally, I have World War II Tanks by Eric Grove (1976), Tanks Of World War 2 by Chris Ellis, (1981) and Tanks of World War Two by Jean Restayn that I purchased in 1997 that ALL show a blue to blue gray color on British vehicles in North Africa.

Given the controversy and no definitive answer to this question that I've seen, the builder IMHO is free to paint either the blue or whatever color he/she can document on this tank.

Nice article

From what I have read, the colour was not used as camoflage but to put off the enemy who had them in their sights.

So I would have thought that a higher contrasting colour had been painted.

What we need to do, is talk to Gramps and see he if he could remember any details. Unfortunately my Grandad who fought in Africa has past away some 10 years ago. But he was an artillery man.

Blue and a few other funny colors were used as at one stage in the middle east there was a cronic shortage of paint.