On my desk, the new Tankograd book «Kraftwagen-Flak» (Author: Jochen Vollert /Length: 96 pages /Price : € 36.-).
I always appreciate articles, books, and etc. on areas of history not really explored by past researchers and authors. And to my knowledge, this is the first book on this lesser-known aspect of the German Army in WWI. As someone not terribly well versed in this section of WW1, I learned a lot from the book. Did you know, for example, the beginnings of the German air defense go back to the 1870/71 war? I did not! But, may be this helps me to look at that subject with fresh eyes.
The book starts with the very first attemps to bring guns onto motor vehicles. And there were quite some developpements from companies as Krupp-Daimler and Rheinmetall-Erhardt. In the following chapters we get a even deeper insight into the so called Kraftwagen-Flak during wartime. Examples are the two better-known Rheinmetall K-Flak M.1914 and the Krupp-Daimler K-Flak M.1914 but also lesser known (to me unknown) examples, all illustrated with countles pictures and plenty of information.
Particularely interesting from my point of view is the often overseen aspect of the cruical role of the K-Flak in their anti-tank role from Cambray up to the end of the war. A desteny the Flak had to endure also during the second World War.
Futher chapters cover the Towed Flak, the Raupenflak (A7V) and, yes, even a glips into the future or more into the inter-war time found its place in this great book. The «Geschützkraftwagen 19» is one of my favourites : a huge vehicle with its gaudy multi-colour camoflage. That must have been an impressing sight!
With regard to the colourful camo colours of WWI I must express my enthusiasm about the amount of good and clear pictures of vehicles in the so called Buntfarben and dapple camo colours. I had never seen a photo of a Krupp-Daimler K-Flak in camo stripes, that looks like a late WWII Panther tank. Absolutely delightful!
Alas, the one or two modeler would like to read about the colours used on those vehicles, as it is to be found in the Beutepanzer books from the same Tankograd serie. But I it is fact that also the so called experts do not really know what was used at that time. Nontheless I would have appriciated a short chapter on that theme.
In conclusion it can be said, that for my personal taste, the overall length is near perfect and the pages are packed with a lot of previously unknown photos from the author’s archive. And there is so much information cramped into this book – for the historian, for the modeler, for everyone interested in that field!
So this, too, is a subject where I would like to say: Everybody, who is familiar with the books of Jochen Vollert knows, they are a veritable gold mine for the modeler.
Thank you very much to Peter T for the book review. I like to respond to his remarks, and several other ones for that matter, regarding dimensions and colours: I have seen several model kits of Kraftwagen-Flak and also colourised photos. At this point it needs to be noted that (to my comprehensive knowledge) there are no (!) surviving construction plans to allow for a fully correct representation in scale nor is there any (!) surviving vehicle or colour sample. In consequence, all existing models, drawings and colour illustrations are only educated estimates but not based on hard fact. This is truly sad. However, my publications are based on fact only, not science-fiction, thus what you see on the photos is what you get. I would be more than happy to hear from anybody who has any plans or colour samples on Kraftwagen-Flak: research never stops! Jochen Vollert
I already imagined that there were good reasons not to include plans/color representations! Since your publications are always based on primary sources, that's entirely understandable! I have the feeling that the question about colour tones in the First World War comes up in various forums/FB pages from time to time. I'll therefore allow myself a small, incomplete input here, not because I think I know it all, but simply as a basic aid for those model builders who don't have the time or opportunity to pursue this topic for years. It's little known that original colour photographs (Autochromes) also exist, with colour quality that is even more authentic than later colour films.
In your book, the vehicles appear to be predominantly field gray. The so-called Buntfarben Tarnastrich is documented on tanks; however, here it appears more in the form of a camouflage scheme improvised by the troops. I would call it Dapple Camo, as described once here on landships.
Dapple Camouflage
According to Alfred Muther the plain colour was supplemented by others – not over-painted per se, pretty soon as the war in the West reached a stalemate. So we can find green, brown, yellow, white, black over Feldgrau.
Buntfarben-Tarnanstrich Later in the war this whole camouflage business was tested and regulated by the Army.The colours that in these trials were found to actually be effective as camouflage were sand, green and brown. And the larger and irregular blotches of colour were often separated by black lines, "wide as a finger".
The Black lines between blocks of colour in camouflage schemes seen in many WW1 vehicles seems to have been from a common
practice of laying out the pattern delineated by the black lines and the camouflage colours applied within the lines. I get the impression that
simply overpainting different colours produced unsatisfactory results. I think the Black was often quick drying lacquer. Most paints back in WW1 were
based on Linseed Oil with Lead Oxide stirred in and the appropriate Pigment added. The paints were slow drying, often taking overnight and usually
were applied with a brush. Since many WW1 camouflage schemes were 3 or 4 colour being able to apply the paint colours in parallel would be a major time saver.
I can think of two images of variations of this practice:
- 10-ton Holt artillery tractors in the US in 1918 where the colour blocks are marked in chalk and after painting the blocks the chalk lines are overpainted in black.
- Saint-Chamond tanks at the FAMH factory in 1917.
Charlie
-- Edited by CharlieC on Tuesday 23rd of September 2025 10:15:40 PM
First of all: Thanks for the information! However: My remarks on colours was in sole reference to the Kraftwagen-Flak in the book. I have never seen anything in colour for their production period of 1914-16. In general the Buntfarbenanstrich of 1918 is of course pretty well documented, in particular when linked to the A7V, but it remained a rarity with the Krupp-Daimler and Rheinmetall-Ehrhardt anti-aircraft carriers. An important fact is that there was no "general set of paints for the new Buntfarben colours" that late in the war and under a general shortage of supplies, but many units certainly used paints at hand to approximate the new camouflage. There might have been hundreds of colour variations, thus one cannot generalise those ones seen on the few colour pictures, taken some months or years after e.g. the guns stood in the open exposed to the environment. One also has to take into consideration that two manufacturers were involved, so not necessarily just one base colour, and that these early paints faded rather quickly in the sunshine (even in WW2) so what the vehicles actually looked like after one or more years in service enters the realm of intense speculation. Please find attached the one thing that comes, in my opinion, closest to Kraftwagen-Flak 1914-17 colours, yet it is an eyewitness artist's impression only. Many photos show darker colours than the painting which is the reason I did not put it into the book. Happy to hear more about it!
PS: The Kraftwagen-Flak on the artist postcard is a Krupp-Daimler prototype Plattformwagen M.1914 issued with the very rare gun shield that was never introduced in series (see also 1015 Kraftwagen-Flak, page 24). So it again says nothing about wartime series-production colours.
-- Edited by Oberfeld on Wednesday 24th of September 2025 11:51:14 AM
Good remarks, thanks! I did not want to move away from the core theme of this thread – the wonderful book. But ok, here some additional thoughts.
@Charlie
I agree toally with the you that the colours usually were applied with a brush. There are so many A7V models around – well executed, but with spray painted camo colours. Unfortunately wrong!
And yes, the colour blocks seem to be marked in chalk and then painted.
Concerning the black lines: The order from 7th of july 1918 regarded the black line as an integral element of the «Buntfarben Tarnanstrich. «Die einzelnen Farbflecke (Grün, Ockergelb, Rostbraun) sind mit einem fingerbreiten schwarzen Farbanstrich zu umrändern. Hierdurch werden ein Ineinanderübergehen der Farben verhindert und die formauflösende Wirkung verstärkt»1
I have never seen that army order in person, but all articles refer to it.
1Bayer. Haupstaatsarchiv, München, Abt. IV, Kriegsarchiv 6
@Jochen
That's how I see it, too – and my Autochroms are intended just to give an idea of how this COULD have looked like. You may notice, there are a lot of «could», «would», «may have»! Here another original colour photo. And you are right, that’s looks already completely different!
-- Edited by Peter T on Wednesday 24th of September 2025 01:41:48 PM
-- Edited by Peter T on Wednesday 24th of September 2025 01:44:13 PM
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"Siplicity is the ultimate sophistication" -Leonardo Da Vinci-
All those debats about the exat colour hue, that are common in threads about WWII German camo colours are more and more ridiculous. Yes, these early paints faded rather quickly in the sunshine, further more they differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. But that doesn’t mean that anything goes at all! Light blue, for example, a colour that was certailny used early in the war, was ruled out after the tests.
So the (I called it) Dapple Camo consisted of…
- - Some sort of basicgrey or fieldgreen, that could have been Moosgrün, Farngrün, Olivgrün, Flaschengrün, Graugrün, Zementgrau, Braungrau according to the researches of Hugo Lander.
- - Dots / stripes of green, ockergelb, rostbraun, white and black. Here again, many, many variations of of those hues are possible. Hugo Lander described that in his researches too.
That narrows it a bit for the modeler. A lot of possibilities, but not everthing is right!
You may ask, why ti sis so important for me. As I wrote before, to my opinion, the discovering of such rare color photos helps a lot to gain an approximate picture of how this could have looked like back in those b/w days. This imagination can be transferred very likely to other WWI subjects, including Kraftwagen-Flak - of course without any claim to accuracy 😉.
Setting aside the Buntfarbenanstrich for the moment, does anyone have a source how the 1914-17 vehicles were camouflaged? St. George Models put them mostly into a sort of "Dunkelgrün" dark green. Could brown or dark grey also be an option?
