US Armor Camo scheme circa 1986

Here's a link to a copy of the Army camouflage painting manual. We used the same patterns in Germany on tanks up to the summer of 1989 when we drew new M1A1s. The NATO 3-color scheme showed up as early as 1986 when our FIST teams showed up with the M981 FIST-Vs with the NATO pattern. Also our HEMTTs arrived with the new pattern.

http://photos.kitmaker.net/showgallery.php/cat/14775

Sample page:

I suppose if you run the same image search enough times over the years, you will stumble upon the pictures you want. I found these photos of REFORGER 84 Certain Fury that have the camo scheme I was looking for.

http://m136.de/reforger-1984-ftx-certain-fury

One pic in particular with 2 M577s in column show the difference between the scheme I remembered and was looking for and the MERDC. I knew I was not going crazy and photos had to exist somewhere.... Now if I can only find the photos from the 1987 Division Change of Command... all the toys on the parade ground were done in this scheme and there were lots of PAO photographers out for the Dog & Pony show....

Look here:

http://www.panzerbaer.de/colours/a_relaunch/us_merdc-a.htm

Unfortunately it's written in German

Thank you sir. But that article is about the MERDC camo scheme. My Deutsch is extremely rusty these days, but I was able to figure that out quick enough.

Are you looking for something like this?

http://sites.google.com/site/merdccamo/home/7tharmy

http://sites.google.com/site/merdccamo/home/merdcpic

Thanks Ed, but those are the older schemes.The more I look and the less I find, I am beginning to believe that it was peculiar only to 5th ID vehicles in those years.