South African Army paint set

From olive green to desert browns

The oldest tone in time is the green to the British standard in shade 220, which the vehicles of the South African forces carried until 1961. After that turning point it was replaced by a darker olive in shade 298, for roughly fifteen years. The light stone in shade 361 belonged to the equipment stationed at Walvis Bay and in what was then Namibia, where a green finish would have made no sense in the dry landscape.

The later range for the Rooikat and the Olifant

From the middle of the seventies the dark earth brown in shade 450 took hold, which lasted until 1994 and afterwards remained on support vehicles. After that year a trio of entirely new tones came in: a military dark brown on the main armored vehicles, a stone gray and the so-called buffalo green. These appear both on the wheeled Rooikat and the Olifant tanks and on attack helicopters.

The eighth tone is a medium brown, which the supplier ties to the camouflage of the helicopters of the South African Air Force including the Rooivalk attack type and machines of Italian design.

• In all eight tones for South African equipment of three eras
• The green valid until 1961 and the olive until the middle of the seventies
• The light stone for vehicles deployed in the dry coastal belt
• The trio of finishes introduced after 1994
• A brown for the camouflage of attack and multirole helicopters

The timeline inside a single package is unusually long here, which anyone who builds this equipment systematically will appreciate.