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I'm painting up my Firefly from the Open Fire boxset. Timeframe will be Normandy through Market Garden.

When was countershadowing / countershading of the Firefly turret started as a regular practice? This is where the bottom of the turret is painted white, to make it appears like a regular Sherman.

I have seen many examples of this, but I have heard that the practice only started in early 1945 from online sources.

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/spoelstra/g104/firefly-cam.htm

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Mez

It seems likely that the 8th army were doing this for long enough to be considered 'experts' by Oct '44.

That practice began on July 19th 1944 when the firefly tanks of the Canadin armored divisions were ordered to apply the scheme. It very quickly trickled down and while not every firefly had the counter shading on the barrel it became quite common practice to apply this as German gunners were very apt to take the fireflies out ASAP.