Following on from Bret: there was no real plan for the Berlin Bgde or NATO forces in Berlin to survive long or play any significant role. Once a unit went to Berlin they weren't really included in any real battle plan. Soviet battle plan would of been the hard push along multiple fronts through as it was then WGermany to the coast and ignore Berlin by and large and mop it up afterwards.
Our real purpose was to do a slow fighting withdrawal back towards the coast to delay them as long as possible to allow the main UK forces to mobilise and for Americans to launch REFORGER.

Well, I have spent a good long while masking off the white parts of this camo. I decided to use a pattern inspired by several sources and builds I have seen of this scheme. I cannot believe how difficult this masking job was compared to the abrams! I tried to do it all just with tape and masking solution, then I remembered blue-tac was a useful agent for those awkward nooks and crannies.

So I have shot the grey, ammo grey blue, which I got a solid coat with then highlighted with the same colour lightened with some ammo light grey and thinned more. The highlights are quite subtle and don’t show up too well in the photos and are not to everyone’s taste but I like the process. I have included a shot of the spotlight to show the nice crisp transition you get with this paint.

Here you go;

Sweet! looking good!

look nice

Coming along very nicely Jim, it's looking great.
Looking at yours now reminds me that I forgot to put the etch wipers on the commanders cupola episcopes and also the straps I was going to make out of tin foil for the thermal sleeve straps on my Challenger... Damn lol, oh well.... To late now.

I think I will have to start writing post it notes with things to do on !!

Thanks guys!

You know, I wish I had left those strap ends off the barrel until after the masking, I am constantly bumping them and have just knocked one off. This has been quite an epic task with the masking, I knew it wouldn’t be easy but.. as always with these jobs by the time I’m finished I will know all the wee tricks and will want to go back and start again!

Cheers, J.

Ok, so ready for the brown. Will be going with the medium brown from ammo, which I will spray a fairly solid coat of then highlight with the same colour mixed with some khaki. I decided to leave the green on the engine deck to last as there are a lot of small photo etch handles that I didn’t want to risk with masking.

After all this I really hope what is under all that tape and blu-tac is worth it!

Fingers are crossed lol.....

Thanks John. The brown is on! I have highlighted but once again the effect is almost negligible. I went much lighters with the mix bit didn’t like the effect so more of a solid colour after all. Couldn’t wait to find out what it was like so the turret is unmasked before painting the barrel and the front third of the hull. I had an issue with the masking solution I used being very thin and seeping under the tape, and it is now a real pain to get off the Matt finish but not a disaster. A couple of tiny flaws but I’m fairly pleased with the results so far.

So green on the engine deck is next.

Wow that's starting to look very Good! It looks like you only had very minor bleeding!

Thats looking very very good so far Jim. I dont think the very minor seeping should be an issue .. I would go at it with a very fine brush and a steady hand and correct it that way. Great stuff.

Thanks again guys. I got stuck in and put the green on. Ammo nato green highlighted with same colour mixed with some zinc chromate yellow. Looks quite dark in pics but brighter in real life. Got cleaning up still to do and lost the photo etch tie downs on either side while taking off the tape. Found the two for the port side but the other is lost to the ether! Onto the running gear next, then the thermal sleeve on the barrel.

Very very nice Jim, it's looking tip top. One thing I would say, when you come to weathering it, turret, hull front and sides will be fine with a very light weathering...
But the engine decks.. the Chieftains engine decks were probably the most filthy, oily, crap accumulating places on the face of the earth.
Even when we scrubbed and high pressure washed them they would still be filthy lol...
Chieftain packs and gearbox's would blow on a regular basis and were not happy unless they were leaking something lol.
A good dark wash on the decks will not go amiss.
Also, the resilient rail for traverse safety on the rear decks. The whole rubber sections would normally be black, I have seen some images of black or painting as per the cam... The bit that goes across the T piece however would probably be in original black if you leave the decks green. Just a thought though. It's your baby.

Wow! I hope mine comes out nearly as that!

Thanks John and Ezra.

I will be going for a light weathering overall for sure. Great info on the engine deck and the rubber strips too John. I will certainly make sure it is well oiled! And I’m sure I read somewhere else about those rails on the engine deck not holding paint so will be doing them in black too, was just easy to mask for the green and make it look pretty!

A question about the running gear when it is black, do you reckon that the black would have been painted on the hull/suspension too, or just on the wheels? The hull isn’t going to be seen really but would like to be accurate with it. And still tempted with one side green and one black!

Thanks again, Jim.

What you read was correct, they wouldn't take paint very well at all. It would begin to flake very quickly and would rub off in no time if any paint ever found its way onto them.
Lower hull and suspension would of been standard green, no question.
The plates would rarely ever come off in real time.
We only ever took ours off other than for maint, if we were out on exercise over a very bad winter and if it was extremely muddy clay ground on exercise. And even that was rare.

Coming along very nicley.

I also like the Berlin Brigade M1 Abrams in the background too!

Jim that camo job really looks great! Sorry I have not responded to answer your questions about what Tamiya colors I used, but I used German grey lightened with white if I recall correctly, and I think I used Tamiya dark earth and added some black to darken it. The white I started off with light grey and lightened it til I came close to white. I did spray a lighter version of each color in the center of each square to give the model more depth. I also painted the road wheels black and used the brown color for the engine deck. Thats what it looked like in the Tankograd book....I've tried numerous times to upload photos in my post but don't know what I'm doing wrong. I might just try to upload them into a feature as I did with another model of mine a while ago.Again great job so far on the model !

Rich

Very nice result.

Hi!
Here is some more info on Berlin (however I can´t hold back to advertise my Tankograd book on this subject which is available again after having been reprinted).

The Chieftains trained in the streets of Berlin where they did patrols, also they used "Ruhleben Fighting City" a lot.

You can see a couple of pictures here:
https://military-database.de/1990-ruhleben-fighter-city/

Also frequently, they used the Bergen Hohne ranges for life firing and the SLTA "Red Areas" for other exercise. I visited them even at Rheinsehlen Camp (SLTA) or on a firing range at Bergen Hohne. They were transported there mainly by military train being covered by large tarpaulins as I ws told.

Sometimes, mostly the infantry unit, overpainted their white patches with NATO green for exercised in West Germany. There was an exercise picture in the www some time ago, I saved it but can´t find it back in the net to link here.

The number of armoured vehicles in Berlin was fixed at some point. That means, when vehicles went out of Berlin for exercises, other vehicles had to be brought in. During one of my frequent visits to Smuts Bks there were a platoon of green/black painted Scimetars lined up. These were brought in with their crews to subsitute for vehicles exercising at SLTA.

John, I respect your knowledge, as you were serving with BAOR a long time, but my info was that every new unit comming to Berlin in rotation brought their own vehicles and painted these. Myself, I saw a half-painted FV434 (hull ready in Berlin scheme, running gear mixed, crane jib and some upper areas still in green/black. On the otehr hand, during the deployment of D Sqn 14/20 KH they had Chieftain Mk10 in Berlin and Challenger 1 Mk3 in their remaining 3 Sqns at Münster. This was at the very end of the Berlin deployment of BAOR. So maybe, we are both correct, and it depends on the time frame if vehicles remained or not.

Anyway, it was a really interestimg time for me with the british Berlin forces.

Refering to the topic again, very well done camouflage scheme here, really carefully spayed and masked! Beautiful!

Andreas

Andreas, hi again, and indeed we both may be correct on this one and as they say, sometimes 2 heads are better than one.

I was basing my info on the 14/20 KH as they they actually took most of our Chieftain Mk10s when they rerolled from UK to as was then W Germany (in about very late 87 into 88) while we were in Sennelager. Their B Sqn was the last to equip with Mk10s which they had from my old Sqn, C Sqn the Blues and Royals.
They had already taken over as the Berlin Bgde Sqn then.

Thanks everyone for the kind comments, much appreciated. And that is some great info Andreas and some excellent photos I hadn’t seen before.

Richard, thanks for the paint info, I use imgur to host my photos and post a link in my threads putting at the end, no spaces, which works for me. I used to use photobucket but then they started exhorting everyone!

Edit, can’t put the prefix or suffix in the thread without the software thinking there is a picture!

Thanks again all

They are some cracking images of Berlin Chieftains. Also Jim, you can see that all the sections of resilient rail on at least one wagon were all black.
Thanks for sharing those Andreas.

That looks great.
Best rendition of this camo, I've ever seen.

Thanks very much Marc! It was a labour of love For sure with all that intricate masking! Your appreciation is very welcome.

Yeah John, they are great shots of the resilient strips. And going from those shots the running gear looks black too. I think from your testimony and mounting evidence I really should do them black. And the guide teeth look nice and shiny/polished in that last shot. Great inspiration for weathering too, keep it simple...

Once again Andreas, thank you so much for those shots. And best of luck with the reprint of the book, I wish I had had it at the start of this.