Landships II

I cannot recommend a spray but Tamiya XF-52 is a close match for the Dark Khaki color used on British tanks. If you can find a spray paint close to this color it should work.

velotrain wrote:

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Thanks, John - I'll try to locate a spray that's close to this.

I'm curious; my understanding was that the color is still hotly contended, or have a majority agreed on this here - or elsewhere?

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The colour is not hotly contended. They were brown. Something like Humbrol 29 or Tamiya XF52. Take a look at Lodestar III:

Firefly is a Whippet, and they are generally thought to have been green, or perhaps grey in some cases. A couple of the men who took photos of the tank some years ago (photos which should be present in the Whippet article on Landships II) considered it difficult to say what colour Firefly is, but believed it to be "some sort of green".

For my part, I have noticed in a detail photo of the tank that clean grey paint can be seen on a bolt on one of the track frames - although this is not conclusive, as it may be not be original (the paint overall does appear to be original).

So no, Firefly is not considered an anomaly: the khaki/brown description refers to the heavy tanks, as used from early 1917 onwards. There's a photo on flickr showing a close-up of one side of Lodestar III, I shall see if I can find it again to post a link; it shows the colour better than most pics that show the whole of the tank, as these photos tend to show how light reflects off the film of dirt and dust covering the vehicle, rather than the paint itself. Assuming the colour is shown quite faithfully, as it seems to be, I would describe the colour as tan, as it is quite an orangey shade of mid-to-light brown. Close inspection of the photo is needed, as the flecks of clean colour are small and scattered about.

Thanks - I was asking about landships in general, and thought Whippet was included, but perhaps only generation 1 up to the MK. IV are in that elite category.

PDA had attached the image of Lodestar III, so no need to search for the other image.  I take it that it's in Belgium, as I see Firefly next to it.

I certainly have no personal knowledge, so am dependent on what I read, and most of the references I've seen indicated that the jury was still undecided - but then, they weren't official landship juries.  The colors I see on models are pretty much all over the place.

I tend to think of a khaki as a darkish tan, but a quick search brings up a minority of hits showing what I'd call a grayish-green.  I'm guessing you intend it as a light brown?

 

 

It definitely looks more brown in the images, but on Landships II I noticed the two commentators saying it was more green.

velotrain wrote:

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Thanks - I was asking about landships in general, and thought Whippet was included, but perhaps only generation 1 up to the MK. IV are in that elite category.

PDA had attached the image of Lodestar III, so no need to search for the other image.  I take it that it's in Belgium, as I see Firefly next to it.

I certainly have no personal knowledge, so am dependent on what I read, and most of the references I've seen indicated that the jury was still undecided - but then, they weren't official landship juries.  The colors I see on models are pretty much all over the place.

I tend to think of a khaki as a darkish tan, but a quick search brings up a minority of hits showing what I'd call a grayish-green.  I'm guessing you intend it as a light brown?

 

 

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Taking your paragraphs one by one, I would say:

1 - it tends to refer to all the heavier vehicles right up to Mk IX, which was a troop carrier which had entered production at the time of the armistice, but not entered service. Whippet was a medium tank - "Tank, Medium, Mark A" to put it formally. I would agree with PDA that in theory all tanks should have been the same colour, although I say so more from what seems common sense than confirmed knowledge.

2 - the image was easy to find, and the link is in my last post; the pic PDA posted is a good one, but I particularly wanted to point out that close-ups give a better idea of colour, because you are looking more closely at the paint rather than the overall effect.

3 - the variety of colours seen on models is likely the result of many people still not knowing that the tanks were "khaki", especially since the norm was for some time for surviving vehicles to repainted green. The Tank Museum at Bovington repainted its Mks IV and V in brown some years ago (the exact shades seeming to differ between the two vehicles, and varying widely according to light), but some older books have illustrations or descriptions suggesting green or even the two-tone-green-plus-light-blue colourscheme that the Museum's Mk V sported decades ago. 

4 - khaki is not actually an exact colour; the word comes, I believe, from one of the languages of India (during the days of the British Empire), and refers to the colour of earth/dust - which, of course, varies lots. As a colour, therefore, khaki varies a lot, and covers both greens and brown/tan shades; if you look at British uniforms, the description "khaki" tends to mean khaki green. In the case of WW1 tanks, it's khaki brown.

Returning to the second point, and taking PDA's last post into consideration, I would add that close-up photos should be best for deciding what colour you see on Firefly. The vehicle is nearly a century old and the paint is thin, so much of the apparent colour of the vehicle in full-tank photos is not actually paint, but discoloured metal, a brownish-grey dark colour from surface corrosion. In some places the paint has worn away, whilst in others it is so thin that the brownish-grey of the metal shows through and makes the paint look darker and duller.

There are plenty of photos of Firefly on Landships II as far as I recall, so I advise taking a good look and using your best judgement to pick brown, grey, or green. If you haven't done so already, I would also recommend taking a look at the photo on Flickr (link in my last post), and if it's of interest, there is an old thread about clockwork toy tanks: the toy featured was first produced in 1919, so the colour of the full-size tanks would be fresh in the memory of those producing the toys, and those buying them - whether they had seen tanks in France/Belgium or one of the tank banks and presentation tanks. The colour of the clockwork toy may seem startling at first, but it actually bears a close likeness to that of Lodestar III in Brussels - so I consider it also a good reference.

 

EDIT: Clockwork Toy Tank

-- Edited by TinCanTadpole on Wednesday 4th of September 2013 10:11:40 PM

colour is always a difficult issue when its so long ago. I think on some restoration they analyse paint that is out of sunlight etc. One thing I know from railways is that if paint as in short supply, or to save money, it was either diluted or mixed with white. At Swindon works I heard a story about paintint a locomotive. At the cab end it was standard green, but to get the job done the paint was diluted to finish the job without getting more paint, so the front end was paler than the cab.
In war time would the paint all be of the same quality? Once out in battle conditions it would change.