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Does anyone know the best greys to use as a basecoat and highlight for painting WWII German tanks?

Craig

Usually described as 'Panzer' grey or "WW2 german grey" in most paint suppliers, my preferances are below.

Enamel - Humbrol 67 or Revell 78.

Acrylic - Vallejo German grey (carries the numbers 995 and 167 apparently)


Best to thin paints before use, especially the Vallejo. For best results with Vallejo, thin and apply several coats, the layers settle down and dry very thin so you don't lose detail.

Possible greys:

for RAL 7021 = Revell M 9 or H182 Humbrol or X800 Xtracolor or 30-001 JPS modell
for RAL 7024 = Revell M 78 or H 67 Humbrol or TS-4/XF63 Tamiya

RAL 7021 is the color Tanks are supposed to be painted back in WWII
RAL 7024 is the color those tanks were often painted

Information taken from:

ISBN 3-7637-5990-5 "Tarnanstriche des deutschen heeres 1914 bis heute" / Johannes Denecke / Bernard&Graefe verlag 1999

I would use Revell M 78 (newly painted) or M 77 bleached color).

Field grey or feldgrau is what you are looking for. Tamiya do a field grey.

gruntboy wrote:Field grey or feldgrau is what you are looking for. Tamiya do a field grey.

No, this is not right. Feldgrau is the grey-green of German infantry uniforms. Panzer grey is totally different. I prefer the Panzer Grey Testor's Model Master enamel rattle can for basing my early German armor. Valiejo's German Grey acrylic would also work well, I use it as my off-black shade on miniatures, and it's of a comparable color. Now ask about German Yellow (dumklegelb) and see how many different answers you get The moral of the story is that you have alot of leeway as the paint faded in the sun and was mixed differently and applied differnetly. Some people prefer a color almost black, but I think in practice (and on a scale mode) this is too dark... I think early German tanks look best in a color closer to grey than black, which can be achieved thru a slightly lighter basecoat, or thru weathering and fading.

EDIT: Here's one of my photos illustrating this:


Feldgrau is the uniform color of the infantry. My Tiger is in panzer grey, but I went for a heavy weathering and fading, as this dio is set around the end of the use of panzer grey... a few months after this, this unit (the 503 Feldherrnhalle) had almsot exclusively camo painted Tigers.

I agree. The tanks should be a slightly different shade of grey than the infantry. This is the same apporach I took when painting my Imperial Guard army.

Those guard look great.

Here's a legendary tome; highly recommended. Beats FW hands down.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Panzer-Modelling-Masterclass-Tony-Greenland/dp/1841762369/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227998605&sr=8-1

Prometheum5 wrote:
No, this is not right. Feldgrau is the grey-green of German infantry uniforms.

Actually Vallejo makes a German Uniform Grey (Code 888 - Olive Grey). Which is a green-grey. Most movies have it wrong about uniform color. It is NOT grey. Your Field Marshalls sometimes had a grey uniform (as all officer uniforms were not provided they had to purchase their own) but the regular grunt was issued a wool dark green/grey uniform.

And now that gets into Summer Uniforms...Naval Land formations...Luftwaffe....

Yeah...did WAY too much research for my old FoW german army.

Also, about the tanks - after '42 the standard paint from all factories was the yellow Ochre not panzer grey anymore. This was due to the Eastern Front and all the wheat fields.

Some French units would repaint their units Panzer Grey but by '45 the paint was a rather rare commodity.

Now Panzer Ace Whittman ALWAYS painted his PnzrIV's and Tigers Panzer Grey.....so its a personal modelling choice.

And that is the reason I got out of historical gaming because people really nag you if you use a slightly different color than the "traditional" scheme.

And I LIKED seeing a Pink Panther...

[/rant]

Sorry about that.

Now Panzer Ace Whittman ALWAYS painted his PnzrIV's and Tigers Panzer Grey.....so its a personal modelling choice.

To be fair, this isn't quite correct either... Whittman's late Tigers (including the one he died in) were zimmerit-coated and camouflaged. You're otherwise good tho I can't imagine playing any real historical games, but I LOVE historical modeling and doing the research for it. It's a dorky hobby beyond all reason, but I spend more time reading about and researching WWII armor than I do actualy making models.

You ARE quite correct on the uniforms... movie Germans always have charcol-grey uniforms, but that's wrong.

gruntboy wrote:Now ask about German Yellow (dumklegelb) and see how many different answers you get

You think that's bad?

Try defining what Olive drab is. I'm a military modeller, as you can see from my blog.

Ha, good point... OD is way scarier because it had been used for waaay longer.

Prometheum5 wrote:

gruntboy wrote:Field grey or feldgrau is what you are looking for. Tamiya do a field grey.

No, this is not right.

You arrogant so-and-so. Man, I love the internet. There's no such thing as "panzer grey" if you're referring to actual tank paint. I recommended a freakin' tamiya paint colour. Neither feldgrau nor "panzer" grau are THE colour tanks rolled out the factory with. That was Dunkelgrau up until about 1943 but you won't get a catchy one answer for all to that either.

"Panzer" grey is far too dark in my experience. Field grey on a black undercoat is about right. Actually, thinking about the original question and not a peeing competition as to who has the most fanatical knowledge about nazi tank paint, panzer grey basecoat with field grey highlights might actually work.

I think a blue grey brings more depth to the colour. I always paint my IG tanks with shadow grey, streaked up to fortress grey, with lots of codex grey in between, but that just me, and i use GW paints.

You arrogant so-and-so. Man, I love the internet. There's no such thing as "panzer grey" if you're referring to actual tank paint. I recommended a freakin' tamiya paint colour. Neither feldgrau nor "panzer" grau are THE colour tanks rolled out the factory with. That was Dunkelgrau up until about 1943 but you won't get a catchy one answer for all to that either.

"Panzer" grey is far too dark in my experience. Field grey on a black undercoat is about right. Actually, thinking about the original question and not a peeing competition as to who has the most fanatical knowledge about nazi tank paint, panzer grey basecoat with field grey highlights might actually work.

Sheesh.... There was no arrogance intended in my post, but the color you mentioned (feldgrau) is a completely different color from the grey the tanks were painted, and I was trying to make sure the OP didn't go out and buy the wrong paint or screw up a project on faulty advice. The only reason I posted my model was bc/ it was the quickest thing I could find to illustrate the difference in the colors. As for recommending a Tamiya color, I don't know how that makes your answer infallible... I have have a pot of Tamiya Field Grey in my toolbox next to me, and it's still not the paint color the OP was looking for. The tanks were a dark charcoal grey, and Field Grey is a olive-grey that was used for infantry uniforms... two different colors.

Also, about the tanks - after '42 the standard paint from all factories was the yellow Ochre not panzer grey anymore. This was due to the Eastern Front and all the wheat fields.

Your right that in 42-43 tanks where supplied with a yellow ochre or alterntive sand colour, however by 1944 tanks where being supplied in grey once again. And in 39 and early 40 only tanks could be encountered with a basic earth brown scheme. Or is that the kind of not picking that made you give up historical wargaming.

One reason i like German tanks was apart from colour there was no real patern to the camoflague you can just play to you get something you like, after all in addition to the basic grey or sand yellow, tank units were issued with supplies of paint in shades of olive green (plenty of arguments on what this should look like), light grey, red-brown (tamiya do a real nice colour i this) and dark yellow. These were applied by the tank crews themselves to suit local conditions, and were applied in a wide, combination of camouflage schemes and colours. The extra colours were either applied by brush of were sprayed on to the tanks using spray equipment issued at company level and more ammusingly on occasion there was no time to apply carefully worked-out schemes and a suitable colour was often applied by throwing the paint at the side of the tank from cans, if i was a good enough painter i would even try for that look.

So you can find grey tanks camo'd up in brown red, dark yellow or green stripes but really one from the begining of the war, as it was applied by the crews.

To the original poster what scale are you painting? the smaller the scale the more you want to lighten up the german greys, a 1/72 tank looks very dark in a simple base coat.