U.S. Army Europe (Germany) 7th army camouflage 1973-1977 or thereabouts - links and questions
Before, and to some extent it would seem also in parallel with MERDC,
7th Army in Germany used a somewhat strange camouflage scheme from some
time in 1973 to perhaps 1977.
This scheme apparantly consisted of a sand base, with patches of brown, less green, and a little black.
I have been researching this scheme for some time now - and have also
found a few websites with photos (for example the gallery pages of
www.usarmygermany.com and www.eaglehorse.com)
Judging from the section on the 3d Armored Division at
www.usarmygermany.com, which shows some M-113 APCs with a less
intricate pattern than other pictures, it would be my guess that the
patterns were not completely standardized. Yet I simply cannot believe,
as some would have me, that the colors and patterns were not regulated
somehow. I mean, this is the US army we are talking about, right?
I found some pages in Google from a German modelling site, that seem to
provide a little further info. Unfortunately the site is under
reconstruction now, so I took it from the Google cache of the pages.
According to Jens Popp, there were no less than TWO schemes: one in
1972 and one from 1973 onward. The 1972 scheme he claims consists of
these four colors: 30277 Sand (40%), 30279 Sand (40%), 34079 Forest
Green (10%) and 37038 Black (10%). According to Popp, this is a scheme
devised under the MASSTER programme. The other scheme, which other
places (like http://www.panzerbaer.de/colours/us_camo_masster-a.htm)
call MASSTER, is similar, but with different colors. Popp seems to
claim that this scheme was regulated by USAREUR Regulation 525-5 (1971)
1973, and consisted of these colors: 30277 Sand (34%), 30117 Brown
(30%), 34127 Forest (?) Green (27%) and 37038 Black (9%). I find this
far more believable - the colors seem very consistent with the various
color photographs I've looked at. However, apart from Popp's (now
possibly temporarily defunct) web page, I can find no other references
pointing to 525-5 that seem to have anything to do with camouflage. As
other pages (like panzerbaer above) readily list a different color for
the green, and as pictures seem to allow for various interpretations of
the green (even if the brown looks spot-on like 30117, the green could
easily be 34102 or even the notorious 34087 OD - now 34088), I would
like more evidence. A scan of some actual regulations would of course
be terrific! Tales about how G.Is just mixed colors at hand locally are
also interesting, but less so, although I realize that this probably
was the case to a large extent. Even so, there must have existed an
official list of colors. I am of the persuasion that if I must
approximate a color, it helps to know what color I should approximate.
I post this here in the hope that some modellers out there - perhaps
veterans from the cold war in Germany - can shed some more light on
this matter. I find this particular period of the cold war very
interesting from a modelling POV, as there was a great variation in
vehicles (M-113 variants, M-109, M-110, M-578, M-60, Sheridan, M-548,
Gama Goat, M-151 MUTT and numerous other kinds of trucks), which can be
combined with various color schemes of plain OD or the scheme discussed
above, or even with "ordinary" MERDC, when vehicles from other branches
joined in exercises. Just as for airplanes, this was an era of
transition, it was before the massive standardization on very few types
that we have seen since the late 80es. Of course, I can't help
wondering, have I found a niche of my own with this subject matter? It
doesn't seem to pop up very often in FSM, or on various modelling sites
that I watch. And the availability of kits also leaves room for massive
improvement: I build 1/72, and it is even worse than 1/35.
So: anybody out there who can shed more light on the "experimental" camouflage of the U.S. Army in Germany in the early 1970'es?
-Lasse