Info needed: correct colours for WWII Aust vehicles

[Mrs Vampire]

The issue of eye matching and local purchase has been covered previously ..put simply if it happened at all it was exceptional,
Despite notions that things were complete chaos in 1942 the Army had an effective supply chain and ordinary paint was very hard to get on account of strict rationing...the only paint available to units would be to scale and to approved colours....

There are not so many vehicles with recoverable external paint. I have looked at quite a few and finding parts of vehicles and using complicated recognition methods I have yet to find one with paint that is not one of the official colours. I also note paint under a seat or chassis rail is not indicative of the external camouflage finish it shows the factory finish which varied over time for instance the factories were still painting KGJ in 1944 when the colour was KG3 and most of the spared were the earlier colour...overpainting in Army workshops prior to issue was the rule. There were huge ordnance workshops in all states.

Here is an example and one that will never be sandblasted out of existence .

Btw earlier in the thread there is a link to a Passing out Parade at Parkes NSW showing a remarkabl;e uniformity of colour if a somewhat interesting pattern ,,, as it should be

[Lang]

Gina

I did not mention local purchase but was referring to various manufacturers original paints.

Even today, with multi million dollar computers, multi million production runs and highly advanced long lasting and stable synthetic paints a painter would never just blast a repair straight out of the can, supplied by the manufacturer onto a three day old car that had never been in the sun.

He will always run a test spray and more often than not his computer or eye will require a minor alteration.

Lang

[Mrs Vampire]

I hear what you are saying Lang.

It has been put to me many times , I have never found any evidence to support the theory that manufacture paint varied to any extent in colour.

The method of manufacture ,,,specified weights and measures of pigment such as chromate where those pigments were held to very tight constraints , optical measured comparison with a standard plate and so on left little room for differences.

I also strongly disagree with your contention modern paint manufacturers cant get it right. Spectrography is used to detect copyright infringements routinely these days. Makers of everything from T shirts to I phone cases use very specific colors that are not able to be exactly reproduced without knowing the pigment make up...spectrographs ate sensitive enough to pick iup those differences.

It wasn't as hit and miss as you contend in WWII and its not now so far as my research has revealed

[Lang]

You are probably right Gina about modern paints. Still can't figure out why I pass almost new cars every day, repaired under insurance by top panel shops with the newly sprayed door jumping out from the rest of the body.

Maybe application has as much to do with differences as what is in the tin?

Lang

[Richard Farrant]

Paint manufacturers even today, advise if doing a large job to use paint tins with same batch number to ensure matching.
I agree with Lang, brushing and spraying makes a huge difference in the colour, as does different types of thinners and the amount, also temperature when applied.

cheers Richard

[Mrs Vampire]

this is not an argument I am ever going to win with those committed to a belief of primitive and rough paint manufacture.
The difference in colours of NOS items I have seen can be attributed to country of manufacture and time of manufacture as colors were changed,,,the most common American Olive drab is OD8 there were seven before that.

That paint fades and discolors when exposed to sunlight , hostile environments and oxygen has also been covered previously and accounts for most if not all the differences observed in photographs. Discoloration is especially evident on dead flat paints as we used until the introduction of egg shell KG3 .

I am open to the idea that manufactures may have got it wrong or schemes I have not accepted were in fact used...But I need concrete evidence in the form of documentation or an artifact who's provenance is in no doubt and has been measured scientifically.

When I began my little project all sorts of things were put ...I have chased every one down . What I have now are verifiable and certain.
That's not to say I have everything or that my current position is final...it never will be ,,,but it will always be advanced only with verifiable documentation or evidence from artifacts.

As I indicated earlier I am keen to be shown to be wrong ( that can only improve our understanding ) and look forward to hearing of any documents I have not considered...

[Lang]

Gina

I don't think anyone has mentioned primitive or rough manufacture it is just the colour matching methods of 80 years ago were no where near what they are today and relied greatly on human perception.

Unless every component of the paint comes from the same quarry, factory or refinery (which they didn't) it is not sensible to believe they will be identical with exactly the same formula and will require some form of corrective intervention. Lacking computers and modern spectrographs, the human eye is all that is left.

Just sticking to Army paint.

Back in the 70's we started to get aircraft coming out of the workshop after full rebuilds with their overall olive drab quite plainly different to the other aircraft.

The workshop CO made some investigations and found the paint was coming from a different manufacturer. Still had the same nomenclature and part numbers.

This caused a wider investigation which resulted in "Colour difference is as a result of different manufacturing methods and the new colour is deemed within acceptable variation limits"

A couple of years later the vehicles being repainted at workshops were obviously different to their new colour. Not red versus blue but perceptible to even untrained eyes. Once again, correct part numbers but different manufacturer.

Lang

[Mike K]

Laurie Wrights articles on the Aust. wartime vehicle paint , written by a guy who was there and noted things down, is eye opening . He indicates that the official orders re: painting were ignored to a large degree and it was common to see vehicles in the same unit finished in different theatre colours . If a unit OC was not that fussed about paint then so be it.

http://anzacsteel.hobbyvista.com/oth...siecamlw_1.htm

All this pedantic talk of colours means nil in terms of a tropical environment , mainly because the paint supplied to the DD back then was crap and made to a minimal standard.

[Lang]

Mike

A lot of things on the forum point to people who have never been in the military thinking minute rules laid down are strictly adhered to.

Many rules and instructions, being quoted as justification for something happening, were, and still are, completely ignored (if the troops are ever aware of them). The military is a living working being subject to all the forces of the general community and many instructions are treated with "better things to do with our time" response.

A case in point is reenactors dressed to perfection in all the prescribed uniform and kit of the period. If you look carefully any photo of a group of 10 soldiers in the field, not on parade, of any army, it will show 10 different variations in dress and equipment and not one of them down to the last button shown in the equipment manual photos.

The current discussion on paint colour and schemes is an academic exercise as you will be hard pushed to find photos of any working WW2 vehicle in the field correctly marked down to the last red nut on the CMP wheels let alone a whole gaggle of them going somewhere all identical. They may seem identical but start to look at how the tarps are tied down, where names, numbers and plates are, lettering style and size, whether directional tyres are on the right way etc etc.

The longer they are in units, the greater the local changes and differences from any updated regulations which are generally ignored or at least delayed until convenient.

We need the researchers to give us the background but what is written is far from what is done.

Lang