Early WW2 German AFV paint set

The colorful finishes between the wars

The oldest part of the palette belongs to the period from 1923 to 1937, when German vehicles carried a three-color division of ocher, green and brown. All three tones are tied in the source to the prewar color chart RAL 840R, specifically to the numbers 8002, 6007 and 8010. Beside them stands an early field gray close to the shade 6006, which vehicles without a camouflage pattern and later also small items of equipment received.

The change to a uniform gray and the winter improvisations

From the middle of 1937 the dark gray 7021 took hold, at first as the base under irregular brown patches of the shade 7017 and from 1940 already as the only overall finish of the great majority of armor. It is exactly the pair of the gray and the brown that makes it possible to build vehicles from the first years of the war in their original guise.

The seventh tone is a washable white, which crews applied in winter only to selected surfaces and removed again in the spring. The last bottle holds a blue-gray close to the shade 7016, of the kind that belonged to the vehicles of the Luftwaffe ground units.

• Eight tones for German equipment up to the beginning of the war
• An ocher, a green and a brown for the division of the years 1923 to 1937
• The dark gray introduced in 1937 as the later overall finish
• The irregular brown patches used until the middle of 1940
• A washable white for improvised winter coloring

Anyone building equipment from the beginning of the conflict or from the interwar maneuvers will find the whole color range here together.