Info needed: correct colours for WWII Aust vehicles

[Mrs Vampire]

A confounding thing about the quality of paint contentions....

Several here have put the view that the paint was of poor quality Tony for instance and Mike.

The original specification for the paint was always Alkyd. Dulux did not have any great claim to making Alkyd paint following a patent ruling in 1935 it was available for anyone to manufacture.

Berger , Taubmans , for instance.

As for its durability I point to the photographs of extant artifacts in this thread and wonder if the paint was so bad how come so much of it is still evident even to the extent of determining colour and pattern. some seventy years after application and after continuous exposure to the elements in most cases.

It would appear that the physical evidence would suggest a very high quality product

[Mike Cecil]

Gina,

If making reference to an NAA file, please put the barcode in the reference much quicker to locate that way.

Thanks

Mike

[Lang]

Gina

Mike's letter of September 1942 clearly states that there have been, and continue to be, quality and standardisation issues.

It is a report on a meeting attended by The Australian Camouflage Paint Committee" (the manufacturers) and the Directorate of Camouflage. You can write off user complaints as being for poor application, harsh conditions, bad paint storage methods etc but it seems to me this is first hand evidence from the horse's mouth not anecdotal.

It would have taken some considerable time before these issues were addressed, if ever. Are there any other documents to indicate complete industry-wide standard formulation and industry controlled contract allocation as envisaged at this meeting?

Lang

[Mrs Vampire]

Originally Posted by Lang

Gina

Mike's letter of September 1942 clearly states that there have been, and continue to be, quality and standardisation issues.

It is a report on a meeting attended by The Australian Camouflage Paint Committee" (the manufacturers) and the Directorate of Camouflage. You can write off user complaints as being for poor application, harsh conditions, bad paint storage methods etc but it seems to me this is first hand evidence from the horse's mouth not anecdotal.

It would have taken some considerable time before these issues were addressed, if ever. Are there any other documents to indicate complete industry-wide standard formulation and industry controlled contract allocation as envisaged at this meeting?


Lang

as the file points out those deficiencies were discovered and as the file shows were addressed...the paint ,manufactures who were at fault fixed the problem and that's my point . There were complaints about the quality of some paints particularly from Taubmans in Victoria the issue was addressed and rectified.

Mike Kelly ..I agree it depends on how and where the vehicles were stored...Inside for most of us would seem an extraordinary stroke of luck...the pictures in this thread are as far as I can tell from vehicles that were parked outside without protection . I think its a long bow to assert the paint was poor quality when we rely on 75 year old examples of extant paint samples like these to make our case for colour pattern ect

Sorry Mike Cecil I thought a direct link to the file was quickest of all ....I will pop the bar code in it for you none the less. I thought paying the 245 bucks to put it on line and supplying the link was generous enough ......

[Mike K]

The factory paint was put on after proper preparation - clean surface, primer, undercoat and top coat, maybe several coats.
Yes that's generally true but:

I am having a dig at the Canadians now ha ha ! The NOS cab 12 Ford doors I purchased from Camberwell, these doors had a green painted directly over bare steel , no primer at all , I was amazed that the bare steel inside the doors had no signs of rust .

Getting back to the poor paint , I doubt that they had actually totally solved this poor quality problem until well into 1943 or 1944, that's if they ever did finally solve it . There would have been thousands of vehicles painted in the lower quality paint before the army's complaints were looked into.

Reading the NAA files. There is a message from a navy destroyer ( Stuart I think ) asking their HQ, something like this 'what type of camoflage paint, if any , should we paint our ship with '

[Lang]

Gina

Just had a read of your link put up yesterday giving the RAAF side of camouflage. Talk about herding cats!

The instructions in the beginning of the file coming out in 1941 clearly laid out what is required for the army (until they modified them time and again).

The RAAF, who had thousands of vehicles, decided to do their own thing, coming up with their own colours and patterns and being continuously - or attempted to - brought back into line by Dakin and Co. They still modified his instructions.

Well into 1943 the RAAF had had enough of bad durability and wanted to have their own paint using "the Army Khaki Green J.3"

The Commander of North East Area (the biggest operational RAAF area) said as late as 1943 "We are not painting camouflage, all our vehicles will be overall green" And if you look at photos of RAAF vehicles, even in the islands, the great majority of them are.

Western Australian area wrote an indignant letter saying they had beautifully camouflaged their ambulances according to instructions to find bloody great white circles and red crosses on them!

I particularly like the camouflage painting of the hired Vacuum Oil tankers being used on airfields. Vacuum offered to paint them for the RAAF for $6 each. The RAAF replied no thank you we have a system going and will paint them in water based paint which can be removed when you get the vehicles back.

Hidden in the file is a note "Oops! we already painted them with oil paint before you told us to use water paint."

No plan ever survives the first shot!

An interesting point is the the air observation tests with various patterns came up with the best concealment being plain green trucks both on tree lines and in the open - better than the camouflage schemes.

I was personally involved in air observation of Australian vehicles testing the changeover from the plain khaki green to the current camouflage. Out of about 8 different schemes the plain green came out on top in almost every test. What a wonderful colour that slightly grey green was for the Australian bush, many is the time we stumbled around in the shrubbery trying to find where we had parked our Landrovers. They had an agenda so we now have the second placed camouflaged vehicles.

Lang

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Lang

Gina

Just had a read of your link put up yesterday giving the RAAF side of camouflage. Talk about herding cats!

The instructions in the beginning of the file coming out in 1941 clearly laid out what is required for the army (until they modified them time and again).

The RAAF, who had thousands of vehicles, decided to do their own thing, coming up with their own colours and patterns and being continuously - or attempted to - brought back into line by Dakin and Co. They still modified his instructions.

Lang I’ve not yet seen the file (download problems) but I suspect RAAF sought to standardize their vehicle and aircraft paints. It was around this time they repainted their yellow trainers in (presumably) RAF spec camo paint, so it would make perfect sense to adapt this paint to vehicles, rather than adopt Dakin’s dodgy house paint with all its attendant supply problems. It would also make sense to develop their own camo scheme specific to each base, because that’s where the vehicles would be stationed, and that’s where air attack was expected. Plus of course they had the means to conduct air observations of camo schemes in development, way beyond Dakin's limited access to aircraft.

You’ll find some discussion of this question at post #148 in connection with RAAF Parkes. OMG Mike Kelly that was 3 years ago!


RAAF Parkes Wackett trainer 1.jpg

RAAF Parkes Wackett trainer 2.jpg

RAAF Parkes vehicle camo 1.jpg

RAAF Parkes vehicle camo 2.jpg

RAAF Parkes vehicle camo 3.jpg

[Mike K]

Originally Posted by Gina Vampire

As for its durability I point to the photographs of extant artifacts in this thread and wonder if the paint was so bad how come so much of it is still evident even to the extent of determining colour and pattern. some seventy years after application and after continuous exposure to the elements in most cases.

It would appear that the physical evidence would suggest a very high quality product

A good point . But it depends on where and how the artifacts were stored eg outside or in a shed and the climate as well .

The recent ( 1990's) Wattyl industrial enamels ( alkyd based I think ) used to fade and go chalky after about 2 summers outdoors. I painted a Holden HR ute in Wattyl bronze green , initially a full gloss, after 2 years outside it had changed to a matt dull green.

[Lang]

If you want to settle any argument about formulas, components, dates and changes to paint, with particular application to Australia, this is the definitive work. Includes company histories for the main players.

http://www.cffet.net/ait/X1_paint.pdf

[Lang]

Here are the full minutes of the meeting Mikes document precis.

It is quite clear that in late 1942 the paint quality situation in Australia was causing extreme agitation. The users were complaining, as mentioned many times throughout this meeting.

Just because the government puts out a specification, despite the belief of many, it will not guarantee either uniform manufacture or even "fit for purpose".

The manufacturers stated that no matter how rigid the formula control was at each factory the paint would never be identical under full scientific analysis because of manufacturing differences.

The whole meeting was convened because of poor quality problems. The manufacturers stated they were getting formulas from the contracts board for X quantity of paint and making to those formulas but had absolutely no idea whether the paint was being applied to "buildings or silk". They felt some of the failures were due to lack of consultation with the manufacturers and a one size fits all belief from the contracts board.

Lots more very interesting reading.

Bottom line is the camouflage paint being supplied at that time was not consistent and poor enough to cause numerous complaints and an industry wide meeting to try to fix it.

https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/NAAM...=3367640&T=PDF

Lang

[Mike K]

I think the paint quality would have varied from brand to brand, and as the war progressed resources were stretched. Some of it was poor quality and other brands may have been more acceptable . You would think the factory applied vehicle paint would have been a reasonable quality and it would have been sourced from the pre-war paint contactors eg DLX KHAKI as used by GMH early on.

This pic shows a interesting scheme ! Can anybody make a guess at the colours ? The door script I think is: Presented by THE EMPLOYEES OF Treadways Four Stores . Treadways was a chain store in Melbourne , selling groceries I think.

[Lang]

Mike

The factory paint was put on after proper preparation - clean surface, primer, undercoat and top coat, maybe several coats.

Any subsequent repaint risked a not perfectly clean surface (most respray photos show outside operations) but more importantly they were just top coat on top coat. This is guaranteed to fail as anyone who has ever bought a resprayed car from a dodgy operator will tell you - even if they used $100 a litre paint given to them by the Rolls Royce dealer.

Neither yours nor Keith's body panel photos are proof of quality or long life. Apart from unknown storage conditions and climate, your vehicle paint was hermetically sealed by a coat of grey when it was almost new, Keith's also appears to be over painted with a grey, jet blasted? off in the right shot. The upside is, because they were sealed they are probably a good indication of colour.

Lang

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Mike Kelly

This pic shows a interesting scheme ! Can anybody make a guess at the colours ?

Yes Mike it's Set No.4 but they've used the Lorry chart instead of the Van chart, presumably because the Van depicted is exceedingly short!

Set No.4 was quite widely used in early '42 until Light Stone proved to be too conspicuous in Australian landscapes. This became more obvious when summer ended and the countryside greened up.

Mech Circ 301 Set No.4.jpg

Mech Circ 301 colour sets.jpg