Primer colors for Modern Softskins

Jogging my memory of near 4 decades was a great idea,stikpusher.While i was an Engineer,not in an armored unit,I still saw plenty of them.Your so right that time & effort would be better spent on what they looked like more so from cleanliness than paint wear.Dings from Small arms or larger would make more sense than What I've seen at model shows lately.One magazine article of a British WMIK was so overdone you'd have thought it had been sandblasted ,point blank, over the whole thing.I think it would have taken a monthlong sirocco for that much paint to have been removed ! Thanks for your input. Keith R.

Even in WWII, most countries had good quality control for the base paint on vehicles. Yes paint would chip, but nowhere near as much as seen on the current "trendy" models. Look at actual WWII photos and chipping is minimal to non existant in most cases. WWII vehicles had short service lives, often only months long before they were destroyed, lost, or replaced. Dirty, dusty, and muddy, yes. Chipped, maybe if they have been thru a few fights and survived. If you are a vet, think back to your service time and how vehicles you served on or around looked. You wont go wrong from that starting point.

Thank You, Roy.I'll heed your advice.Logically,paint technology has come a long way since WWII,& I do try to temper following the latest new methods until I try to ferret out their legitimacy.I would be curious of your opinion of using discreet chipping on WWII vehicles.Since it was a war of production & I assume all sides were cranking out vehicles as fast as possible plus the paints were probably of varying qualities,would you then advise it as part of overall weathering ? Your thoughts on that would be appreciated. Again, thanks, Keith Rudzik.

My advice: don't fall into the current weathering fad of chipped paint for this model. If you want realism, don't chip the paint. You'd need a doggone ice pick to scrape this stuff. And it surely wouldn't chip off in flakes.