Painting Armor in Vietnam War

[MGH]

It seems like pretty much every sort of equipment, vehicles in the Vietnam War was some sort og green, makes sense.

I'm painting for doing late war battles between PAVN and ARVN after the US had left. Any advice on whether the North Vietnamese tanks were a specific different color of green than the ARVN US supplied armor?

Granted, all of them are gonna look pretty muddy too.

[SJWi]

MGH, I'm 99% certain the NVA armour was painted a "lighter" shade of green. I have the very old Squadron/Signal book "Armour in Vietnam" which has a colour plate showing a T34/85 in 1972. It is in a very different colour than the equivalent ARVN vehicles. I also googled "North Vietnamese Tank Colours" and in the images section found lots of photos of NVA tanks which are now in or outside museums, plus photos of model kits painted as NVA. They back up the Squadron/Signal book. 

Regards 

[tomrommel1]

They had a lighter shade of green, but if there is an exact match in one of the paint ranges from Vallejo or AK etc  I can#t say.

[carlos marighela]

To the best of my knowledge, PAVN tanks were painted in the same khaki green colour they received them in from the Soviet Union (typically KhS-508). In the case of Chinese supplied vehicles, the Chinese local equivalent.  MiG produce a variety of post-war Soviet greens if you are especially anal about such things.

To be honest there's little point getting too hung up about exact shades as in practice they varied quite wildly for a variety of reasons including batch differences, manufacturer's differences, sun exposure and environmental factors, ie mud, dust,oil stains etc, etc. By the time you have weathered the vehicle up pretty much any darkish olive green will do the job, including 4BO, the WW2 era Soviet Green.

I've tended to use a variety of Tamiya rattle can greens, including NATO green. Whilst I can't claim they are 100% historically accurate, I've been fortunate enough to examine a number of PAVN vehicles in museums in Hanoi and HCM City/Saigon and I'm happy enough with the Tamiya rattle can approach. I can post photos of the originals and my interpretations if you like.

[MGH]

Thanks, gentlemen!  Great stuff. It's helped me a lot.

I did google various photos including museum and display photos but I recall once researching a WW1 project about artillery colors and some experts warned not to trust museum pics for example because the exhibits are painted inaccurate colors at times, the locals in charge more worried about rust than accuracy.

I did see a few color battlefield pics but those were mostly knocked out armored vehicles and often in fairly bad shape. But yes, the NVA tanks did look somewhat lighter than the ARVN ones to me also. And of course everything was muddy too.

And, Carlos, you make a great point too about varying a lot by batch, manufacturer, exposure, etc.

Anyhow I'm more confident now in what I'm gonna be doing!