Vehicle colors for WWIII

[Tom Reed]

A buddy dumped a bunch of US and Warsaw Pact vehicles on me to paint for him. I found several references for the US vehicle colors but have not been as successful finding colors for the Warsaw Pact stuff. T64s, T80s, BRDMs, etc. Doing woodland colors for the US so need the same for Warsaw Pact. Any help pointing me toward free sources is welcome.

[Arrigo]

First you should tell us which period of the cold war are you modeling...

also there is no thing as 'woodland' in US vehicles. You have the MRDC scheme in two variants used in Europe, then the CARC green (usually on M1 and M2/3 basically new vehicles waiting for the NATO 3 color scheme officialization) and the Nato three color scheme coming into service from 1984-85 onward.

The soviet tend to be in green, but there are some variations according to Group of Forces (Germany or Central). WP members  had national approach to camo.

I know nothing about 'free' sources (except researching vehicle image on the net) but I know several good ones.

A good source for US Army vehicles are the various Tankograd books, especially the one on Reforger exercises. The Osprey New Vanguard on T-62, T-72, T-64 and T-80 have also good profile and pictures, as the new books on the T-54, T-55 and T-62 by Sewell (they a re a bit pricey just for a color scheme too... but they are very good).

[zemjw]

The Team Yankee website doesn't have as much as it should, but it does have some - link.

It does have plenty of model shots - Soviet Starter Force

Battlefront does a Colours of War book. It mostly covers WW2, but does also cover WW3. I bought mine from Wayland - link

[Cypher226]

Tanks encyclopedia has quite a lot of colour plates.

For Soviet stuff flat green is pretty ubiquitous, though there were a few camo schemes on the books supposedly to be applied in the event of conflict

[FinnN]

In Warsaw Pact exercises only the Czechoslovak forces regularly used camouflage schemes, at least in the early 80s and before. There were camouflage schemes for Soviet forces (I have an original manual from 1977 which I’ll try to scan in and share here when I get a chance, but there were earlier ones too).

I don’t have a link handy but I found some declassified notes online from a US intelligence unit from the early 80s which refers to having spotted Soviet vehicles being transported using the scheme, together with a note saying it was the first time it was observed. Other than that and ad-hoc winter/mud application I’ve not seen any references or pictures of it or other schemes in actual use until roughly the time they withdrew from Germany.

Late 80s several armies (such as the East Germans) started adopting multicolour schemes.

[FinnN]

Some snaps, there are diagrams for a whole range of vehicles.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Period Osprey books are a good source:


The more modern ones also cover the various Cold War schemes, plus there is at least one Ian Allan book which covers the T-80.

[Tom Reed]

Cool, thanks for all of the ideas.

[bluewillow]

If you have a airbrush Ammo paints have them in convenient packs ready to   Follow including base and highlight colors, and some great books on the subject.

Cheers
Matt