British AFV paint set (WW2 European colours)

Three standards, six shades

British military finishes went through two rounds of standardization during the war, and the set follows them along their whole length. The oldest layer consists of Khaki Green No. 3 to the 1939 standard, also known as the service color, which covered vehicles between 1939 and 1941, and the darker Dark Green No. 4 that goes with it for the disruptive patterns of the same period.

The period of brown and the end of the war

From 1941 the 1942 standard came in and with it S.C.C. No. 2 Khaki Brown, nicknamed service drab. It remained the main finish of British vehicles roughly until 1944 and occasionally appeared a year later still. It was accompanied by S.C.C. No. 1A Dark Brown for the disruptive patterns of 1941 to 1943, among them the scheme named after a well-known cartoon character for its characteristic rounded patches. From April 1944 S.C.C. No. 15 Olive Drab became the base, the finish with which British units rode to the end of the war. The sixth shade, Night Black to S.C.C. No. 14, served as the dark component of the disruptive patterns between 1943 and 1945, first over the brown and later over the olive base.

A note on the paints

This is an acrylic formulation intended for painting with a brush, so it will also serve for small accessories, crates, tarpaulins and equipment stowed around the hull. Larger areas are worth covering in two goes, letting the paint set properly between coats. Disruptive patterns were painted on British vehicles by hand, so a slightly irregular edge to a patch is truer than a perfectly crisp boundary cut from masking film.