King Tiger Camo Scheme

Hello Airbrush,

Check out several of the posts here in the forum for visual examples, or go to the website of the tank club that I'm in: www.maadhq.com where there are several pictures. As for the colors, it was a three toned ambush paint scheme, usually with dots added. The dots can be the hard part if your airbrush isn't really clean and able to operate extra fine. The pattern of the camo is up to you. My humble suggestion is to start with a dark red primer, then a base of either dunkelgelb (dark yellow), or rotbraun (Red brown) and then decide which pattern you want.
Once you have an idea of what you want, spray a pattern with the colors dark yellow, dark green and red brown. The dots just have to be opposite colors of
the color they are sprayed over. Check out the work of some of the very gifted individuals here in the forum that do German armor like Captain Caveman, Erock68, Muzzleflash88, Erush, Edog, J-Hulk and many others.

Roy

According to my sources (Minitracks magazine), King Tiger delivered from September 44 came out in the dark red oxyde primer, without any Zimmerit, and the dark yellow and green were then applied on. So they already had done away with the Red Brown color by then.

QUOTE: Originally posted by djmodels1999 According to my sources (Minitracks magazine), King Tiger delivered from September 44 came out in the dark red oxyde primer, without any Zimmerit, and the dark yellow and green were then applied on. So they already had done away with the Red Brown color by then.

Yes, my sources say this as well. The red primer was actually quite surprisingly red, when you see it reproduced. It's also surprising to see how hard the pattern is on the 501SS vehicles in the Ardennes. At least in the paintings, it doesn't look like it was airbrushed on the vehicles at all. I would probably just brush paint it on, or use a mask when you airbrush, to get a hard line.

There is a 501SS s.Pz Abt. vehicle from the Ardennes illustrated (twice, I think -- one the cut-away) in the New Vanguard book by Osprey -- in fact, it may even be number 222, Unterscharfuhrer Sowa's mount, famous as the tank that carried those paratroopers into battle in that photo and film footage you see all the time.

In fact, here it is from Amazon.com's website (hope this works)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/185532282X/ref=lib_dp_TFCV/102-6033924-2132130?v=glance&s=books&vi=reader#reader-link

(The book itself is pretty dry stuff, mostly development history. Not one of the better New Vanguard titles. The Zaloga ones are great.)

501SS in the Ardennes is probably the most reproduced of the color schemes carried by Tiger II's in Western sources, as that was the largest accumulation of Tiger II's faced by the Western armies in WWII. However, my own personal favorite unit is 509 s.Pz.Abt. from the battles in Hungary, as part of IVSS PzKorps -- the battalion was much more successful at its task than the SS guys were in the Ardennes. The tank just wasn't suited for such operations.

The 509 guys, on the other hand, wiped out entire battalions of IS-II's and dug-in ISU-152's, sometimes attacking against superior numbers of these big enemy vehicles and prevailing. It's an amazing testament to the power of this vehicle when it was properly used.

Check out Tigers in Combat I for more on the Tiger aces of the 509.

Actually Larry_Dunn, I believe that the picture you mention is the exact one I am basing my new Dio off of. And the paratroops i ordered from Dragon, I believe are based off the photos I have as well... infact the guy standing in kit #1 with the british MK II sten submachinegun looks exactly like the pic and so on and so forth for all of them... same pose weapons and everything.

The cover of the book is not showing up in the link any more. Maybe it gets disabled when hyperlinked. Look what I've gone and done now! [:0]

From September new produced AFV get a sharp edged camouflage without Zimmerit; and for winter i would makea little winterwash

greetz from GE

Thomas