Can anyone suggest a readily available enamel or acrylic brush paint color that would be correct for North Vietnamese vehicles of the Vietnam war? I don't have an airbrush, so it will need to be paint that brushes well. Thanks!

Hi Jim;

Russian Armor Green !!!--Then fade to A liter green.
And for Painting with A Brush use Acryl's and thin with Water. Always Test on the Underside of the Hull first to see how good the coverage is.

GOOD LUCK; MIKE.

Thanks, Mike. That's what I've always understood to be the appropriate color, but lately I've seen photos in which the color looks darker, more of a green gray. So any advice helps!

Jim

I go with a Chi Com green or the grey they often used. I've seen grey colored trucks south of DaNang and out by LZ Ross.
gary

Thanks, Miss Fit. Would chi com green be roughly the same as Soviet armor green?

Sounds like you covered a lot of ground over there, and saw a lot. All I saw was the muddy Mekong.

Here's a GAZ-63 captured by the 1st Air Calvary Division in the A Shau Valley in early 1968.:



Looks rather blueish to me...Contrary to this one captured in July :





H.P.

Thanks, Frenchy. Interesting photos! But--now I really don't what color to use . I imagine the color in the photos has been affected by age and the film used, but the blue tint is hard to explain.

The 1st Cav really knows how to take a prisoner, doesn't it?

The blue truck is in civilian paint not military colors.

Greetings from I-Corp, and welcome home brother!

Believe it or not, I never waded a rice paddy, but waded a few too many streams. Up north we had a term for this time of year. We called it "general mud."

Regarding my post. I've seen trucks, elephants, bicycles, and just about anything that could carry something at one time or another. The green was a very dull forest green, or a medium grey color. Have seen both in use. Of course there was the other color that was preferred. It was burnt brown.

Sometime I'll tell you about the first truck I saw out by LZ Ross

gary

Just a quick note regarding colors in old photos. Reds usually fade first, followed by yellows. Especially true of the Ektachromes of the 50's thru the 70's. Inaccurate field processing can only add to the decline. This fading leaves a cyan tint (blue with a hint of green).
As for paints, greens loose their red and yellow components in the sun so paint will take on that same cyan tint after a while. Modern paints on cars have more aggressive UV protection but I still remember the red cars of the 60's that faded to some awful shades of pink in just a few years.

Not only from the 60's, red Volvos from the mid-late 70's, maybe as late as the early 80's, also faded to reddish pink.
That's about the only time when I have seen real 1:1 examples of the popular panel fading method (every painted sheet of metal fades faster in the center than out at the edges).
/ Robin

Every horizontal surface of my family's nominally red 76 Chev Nova faded to a dusty pink that, if burnished with a fingernail, revealed the red under the oxidised top layer. You could actually buff the oxidised layer away if waxing the car, but it would re-oxidise leaving a wonderfully "tie-dyed" surface that changed every time you washed the car.

Appalling paint.

Can't trust old color photos. Apart from the variations in printing and the varying reproduction of color computer monitors, Kodak, Fuji and other color film was sold with "indoor" or "outdoor" color balances. Outdoor light has much more blue, and indoor light more yellow, so the films was tweaked to adjust. If you photographed olive drab paint outdoors with "indoor" film, it came out blue. I have plenty of shots from Aberdeen like that.