Model Forum / General / Models / October 2005

You've picked a time when clors were starting to shift into their first
iteration of the FS-595 series but weren't there yet. It was common for
unit commanders to have some gloss black mixed into the OD for tanks
because the darker and glossier paint looked better on parade grounds.

Aaaahhh Yes! Anybody got a tape of "Panzer Leid"?
Great music to build models by!

                    Bill Shuey

Steve Zaloga wrote in an article for Military Modelling that Tamiya's
Olive Drab acrylic is a spot on match for the US Army's color card
issued to WW2 paint manufacturers for No. 9 OD (he suggests you lighten
it a bit with German Dark Yellow for scale effect). I know, I know,
you're talking Cold War era, but Zaloga further reported that the color
standard for Olive Drab went virtually unchanged from World War One
through its discontinuation in 1974--the paint codes changed, but the
paint didn't.
However, starting in the early postwar period, semi-gloss paints
supplanted the flat enamels, and these "read" darker to the eye. And as
another poster noted, unit commanders in the 1950's liked the look of
OD mixed with black, so the tanks were often very dark indeed, a
practice that apparently remained commonplace until the four-color
MERDC schemes were introduced in 1974 (the color of an M60A1 I
photographed at Fort Carson, Colorado in 1975 was so dark, it looked
like Luftwaffe Schwarzgrun).
AN613 and No. 41 Olive Drab were Air Force colors, so steer clear of
those.
What about FS34087? Well, the color in the current model paint lines
lines is based on a color chip that appeared in the FS-595 book in
starting in 1967 which replaced the original dark Olive Drab chip with
the same number. The new version was warmer, lighter and more brown--it
was matched to the paint issued for Army helicopters starting in 1965.
So the Testors Model Master and Humbrol colors are perfect for a Huey,
Loach or Cobra helicopter in Vietnam, but that's about it.
Gerald Owens

Gentlemen -
    Many thanks for your info.  I'll get mixing straightaway...

Frank Kranick

Tamiya Dark Olive Drab in the spray can. I did an M41 with it. Probably not
as dark as some would suggest, but probably scale and semi gloss to boot.