This may sound like a dummy amaturish question, but I rarely do Allied vehicles. Now I wish to paint a Sherman. I've seen color illustrations of US Army Shermans in the ETO in a greenish-olive drab color to a brownish-khaki color. Which color is the most likely?

Well, regardless of the artists' impression, Shermans were painted a color officially named Olive Drab. Straight out of the bottle, I prefer Tamiya acrylics.

This was the primary color for WW2 era equipment. Not hard to find at the hobby shop paint rack either.

Olive Drab is the color whether its British or US. There are plenty of model paints available for this color. Even faded or tinted if you prefer scale color.

I recently asked this on another model site, the answer I got was basically Olive drab is a "greenish-olive drab color to a brownish-khaki color" apparently OD was not just one color, it varied on batch, date etc.

Personnally I like the shade of OD that Tamiya does, it is closest to the restored armor I've seen. While I like Tamiya's shade I prefer Testor' s Model Master Acrylics. Model Master has Olive drab (#4728) that is a brownish sort of khaki color and they have Green drab (#4727) which is close to Tamiya's OD. Tamiya has a color Khaki drab that is similar to Model Master's OD.

There confused I was

I,m with Roy on this one (I do that a lot eh!) Steve Zaloga did an article a few years back in Miltary Modeling and his findings were that the Tamiya OD is the best one on the Market ...If you want to fade it do so by adding so XF 59 or other yellow colored paint... Just for a fact ...There is no green in OD the mix was made from Black and Yellow Ochre... wierd eh!

Rick

My two cents:

I too use the Tamiya OD, as the base color to begin.
I then go on to a mix of Tamiya Nato Green, and Tamiya Yellow-Green (Not much yellow-green), for weathering to lighten up in a natural faded pattern.

Great!! Thanks a lot guys!!

http://www.mil-mod.nl/html/featod.html


Interesting article from a site that doens't seem to get much traffic any longer.