Info needed: correct colours for WWII Aust vehicles

[Lang]

Tony

Great research.

It would be interesting to know the make-up of Young's section. A GSO III is normally a Captain who does not go issuing policy instructions under his own signature. It would appear Young was in the fortunate position of being an "orphan", not fitting into the established Army command structure (there are many such specialist jobs) and although under command of somebody in the HQ for administration, basically did his own thing. He appears to be a one man band, liaising with Dakin's mob, and tasked with producing the camouflage instructions. These were accepted automatically by the Army as having come from the expert area of responsibility. Tony, is this your feeling?

The more you read about all this, the more you come to the conclusion that it was so changeable it was impossible for field units to keep up with changes (even if they had the time, manpower or indeed interest). As a result, photos from any stage of the war show vehicles in any paint combination from any period.

It was OK for factories and major workshops to produce the new schemes but when would the thousand vehicles (now scattered to the four winds) they produced last month in the old scheme be repainted?

As you point out the whole thing was totally subjective anyhow with personal preferences, tests that could not possibly produce a pattern for all types of terrain and complaints from the field that patterns were ineffective or even counter productive.



With some camouflage exceptions, the three biggest armies, the USA, Germany and Russia, left their vehicles overwhelmingly in a single colour. Maybe we should have followed suit and not tracked the British path?

PS The introduction of the Gas Resistant paint seems not to have solved the quality problems for if you read through the RAAF file, as late as 1943, they are saying the Army Gas Resistant paint is terrible and suggest they get their own "proper" paint from the manufacturers, using the army colours.

Lang