US Army paint set (MERDC camouflage)

The MERDC camouflage system

In the 1970s the American army introduced a system in which different variants were mixed from one stock of paints according to the season and the terrain. The eight shades in this package are that stock, and each bottle is given with the variants of the pattern it was used in.

The widest use is had by the black, which goes into every variant, and by the sandy brown, which is missing only from the tropical variant. The dark green belongs to the winter and summer verdant variants, to the tropical one and to the pattern for snow with trees. The field drab covers the winter verdant variant, snow in open terrain and the gray desert. The interior green appears in the summer and tropical verdant variants, the medium green solely in the tropical one. The earth yellow goes with the gray and the red desert, the earth red only with the red. The make-up shows how the system worked: the basic tones repeated and what changed was their proportion and the additional colors.

Who the package is for

Anyone building American vehicles of the 1970s and 1980s needs exactly these eight and nothing more. From one package you can cover four-color patterns for several different models and you do not have to look up which shade belongs to which variant. The package is thus more a kit of patterns than a fixed palette for a single scheme.

Applying the pattern

The MERDC pattern has hard-edged patches, so it pays to mark the outlines out and to mask. Start with the area that takes up the largest share of the surface and apply the additional colors last.