hello all. i jsut recently purchased a m60 patton tank for a diorama i am planning. i knwo that main colour would be green but what about camo, or anything helpful in colour. thanks

Graeme

the history of it states taht it was develped and used through out the sixties until the modern era of wich teh m1 abrams was manufactured. im im orng sorry for posting this.

sorry i am wrong...(read another books opinion) can you tell me wether or not this tank took on combat or was in any sort of conflict?

M60 series tanks were not used in combat in Vietnam. A few were sent there for testing in jungle environs. The rest were sent to Germany to be used against the Russian hordes on the plains of Europe, since they were the most advanced at the time. The US tank used in Vietnam was the M48A3. It was adequet for the threat and scope of operations in Vietnam.

The M60A1 (USMC) and M60A3 (USMC and US Army) both saw combat in US service in Operation Desert Storm, '91.

M60s have seen combat under a variety of other flags, most commonly in the Middle East wars in the '70s and '80s.

Which kit do you actually have? Depending on where and when you want to depict it will dictate the paint scheme used on it.

hey thatnks for the reply very help full, i have the m60 A1 so im guessing that would be desert storm or perhaps against russia?? well i tahught that it was used in vietnam turns out my thaughts were looking at the "walker bulldog". so perhaps you could give some info on the desert storm or eastern europe colours? thanks again!

Graeme

Eastern European colors were originally in overall dark OD green. In the early-mid '70s, a new scheme called MERDC was introduced. Here is info on MERDC. Summer, US & Europe, Verdant was the most common for Europe. In the early '80s, the camo scheme was changed to the modern, 3-tone NATO camo.

By the late 70's, most US Army units had switched to the M60A3 and only the USMC continued to use M60A1s. By ODS ('91) there were only a few M60A3 units left in the Army National Guard and the USMC still used M60A1s. The ODS USMC M60A1s were modified with add-on reactive armor and a few other added pieces as well. Most ODS M60A1s were in overall sand, some still wore their 3-tone NATO Camo as well.

By the way....



This is not totally accurate either. The M41 was not used by US forces in any combat action, including Vietnam. The ARVN (S. Vietnamese Army) did use surplus US M41s in combat though.

Graeme, Might I suggest Squadron's Armor in Vietnam as a quick reference to what was used there. There were, however, two M60 based vehicle used, however, the bridge laying AVLB (armored Vehicle Launcher Bridge)

and the M728 CEV (Combat engineer vehicle.)

well thanks both of you, those colours will come in hand! hmm heavyarty if it was not the walker bull dog i saw in veitnam combat photos wich could it be? in the movie full metal jacket teh first combat the young soldier encounters is in a small city. they use tanks to bomb the heck out of the city and they looked a lot liek walkers. i suppose this must have been the m48.well tahnks for straightening this out for me seeing as my knowledge on vietnam is not vast.thanks guys.


Graeme

The tanks in Full Metal Jacket were M47s. Don't trust a movie for accuracy. They were supposed to be USMC M48A3s.

As to the M41s, you still could have seen them in photos from Vietnam, but they were not in US service. M41s were only used by ARVN forces.

thank you ill certainly remember that.

What Gino said about movie tanks. Sometimes these are highly modified peieces of equipment to give a more nearly accurate feel as in Saving Private Ryan, but more often, the only modification is a paint job and some markings to tanks in local service where the movie was shot. Aircraft can be even worse, as with the F-16s in the Iron Eagle series which were Israeli burds with US stars and bars to cover all six Magen David roundels while retaining the distinctive Isreali paint scheme.
Theatrical movies and other people's models should never be used as reference. Discovery/History Channels are just about as bad relying on stock footage some of which has passed into twisted reality sa when several SBD US Navy dive bombers are used in conjunction with Peral Harbor footage. Rely of good monographs such as the Verlinden, Osprey and Squadron in Acion lines.

yeah i knwo what you mean i watched the amking of band of brothers in teh box set and they took a armoured troop carrier and turned it into a panzer v1 wich is actualy amazing but you cant rely on them. i jsut re watched full metal jacket and cannot tell what exactly the tanks are but they did do a good job on making them look liek the m 48's. tahnks for the info.


Graeme

Gino, I believe there was another scheme introduced before the MERDC for 7th US Army in Europe. The MERDC indicates that Forest Green and Light Green are the two major colors which combined would cover 90% of the vehicle.

The 7th Army scheme, which we started applying in about 1974, used either Dark Green or Forest Green, a Sand color (perhaps 30277) and Earth Red (30117) to cover about 90% with Flat Black being the 4th color.

I've got a reference buried somewhere I'll see if I can find, but the original scheme that I saw from 1974 -1977 looked like this:



There's a really good color guide in Squadron's M113 in action for an M577.

Tom

:-) :-) :-) :-)

We were sent TDY to Fulda once...they explained to us we were there as a "speed bump".

As Gino stated, the most common camo was MERDEC. It varied to theater of operation and season. To my opinion this is a good looking camo:
Winter, US & Europe, verdant: Forest Green Field Drab Sand Black

It looks like this:

happy modeling
Harald

wow lots of great info so looks liek its more of a green drab and sand scheme? now i knwo when i first put this up i was thining this tank was in use in nam' but was told otherwise. ive also been informed that this tank was used in jungle trials over there, can anyone tell me more info on this because i really watn to make this a jungle theme. if not then i can make it into eastern europe. thanks again for all your help!

Here's a link to a clear view of the MERDC pattern:
http://www.panzerbaer.de/colours/index.htm

Great link!

It was the MASSTER that I was referring to which as this link indicated preceded MERDC.

I translated the section on MASTER using an online translator and then smoothed it out a bit.



Before the US Army introduced the MERDC camouflage, it experimented with various camouflage schemes. Responsible for the development and testing of the new camouflage finishes, as well as camouflage nets and uniforms was the MASSTER project (Modern Army Sensor Systems Test, Evaluation and Review) in Fort Hood. Part of the project, among other things, was the armed forces of US Army in Germany, starting in the autumn of 1972.

In the early seventies, a large number of wheel and tracked vehicles of the 7th US Army carried a multicolored four-colored pattern rather unusual for Central European conditions. It consisted of the colors sand (FS 30279 and/or. FS 30277), Rust-brown (FS 30117), Forest green (FS 34079) as well as Black (FS 37038), in the cover relation 40%: 40%: 10%: 10%. The painting of the vehicles occurred at unit level. There does not seem to have given camouflage patterns specific for types, so that resulted in the patterns allowing a certain amount of variance and some creativity. Because the painting work was done basically with the paintbrush, the color borders were mostly sharp edged.

The vehicle marks (stars, bumper numbers etc.) were mostly in black. There were the US stars in stencils as well as in a rather stylized form.

The camouflage patterns of MASSTER did not prove lasting and disappeared by the end of the seventies. Nevertheless, they gave important tips for the development of the camouflage patterns of MERDC which replace them.


A couple of comments. One I disagree with the comment about no patterns having been available for drawing the patterns and painting them by vehicle type. There absolutely was a TM or TB which had quite a number of vehicles indicating where and how the patterns were to be applied. We literally drew the patterns on the OD vehicles with white chalk, numbered them 1 -4 based on the four colors and then hand painted each section. As indicated, this was done using brushes and the edges were not feathered or blended in any way. And not every unit used black for bumper numbers, at least initially. I've got photos showing that 8th ID used white. The link also shows vehicles with both white and black.

I do recall that we were all very sceptical about the fact that 40% of the vehicle was painted Sand. UNTIL we went into the field for the first time and discovered that the color was VERY close to the overall color the vehicles became when they were covered with the dust raised on the tanktrails, especially at Graf.

Tom

WOW!! great info guys really helpfula dn theanks white for making sure its not vietnam i think you amade taht point clear haha.anyhow ive got the hull completed and most of the teck completed jsut gonna leave teh details of till its sprayed. should left the track soff too oh well all in the learning process ill get some more photos and put them up for you guys. thanks again!

Graeme

Thanks for the link. I used to have a similar site bokmarked but it went off line.

Actually, the most common way of building it, and the easiest for painting, is to build it completely, with the exception of the track and roadwheels. That way, all your parts are securely glued to plastic, not paint, and they all get uniformly painted. I leave the roadwheels on the sprues and spray them overall flat black, then I use a circle template to spray the color on the metal centers. Once painted, remove the roadwheels from the sprues, clean them up, and assemble them. I paint the tracks off the model then assemble it all together and weather. Works for me.

Good luck.