For German AFV modellers RAL 7028 is sort of like a holy grail with everybody including paint manufacturers having their own ideas on what the colour(s) were.
RAL 7028 and other RAL colours were dropped from the RAL catalogue after the war during the "De-Nazifying" process. and so much information was destroyed not only by the Allies but the Germans themselves that I doubt we will never know exactly what the Germans were up to during the war.
However, with a bit of travel, research and tenacity I have tracked down the real colours.
Let's follow the timeline.
February 1943 the Germans changed the base coat of their vehicles and equipment from the Panzer Grey.... a very very dark grey to a new colour designated RAL7028 Dunkelgelb Nach Muster. The HM paint orders said that new vehicles of the production line were to be in this colour while existing vehicles were to be either repainted in the field or a disruptive pattern painted over the top of the already painted Ppanzergrau (RAL 7021) combined with Dunkelgrun RAL 6003 and RAL 8017 Schokoladenbraun.
This shade - RAL 7028 Dunkelgelb Nach Muster (Dark yellow after pattern or sample) was not in the RAL catalogue and HM applied for it to be registered. What actually went into the catalogue was a completely different shade or you could call it colour. The Germans had been testing camouflage colours since the middle of 1942 and Dunkelgelb Nach Muster was only used until the end of Operation Citadel - or the Battle of Kursk which finished in August 1943. the base coat of vehicles and equipment became the colour that was officially in the RAL catalogue.... in other words, the second incarnation of Dunkelgelb. This incarnation continued into late spring of 1944 and was changed again with the change being recorded in the RAL catalogue. In Late November/Early December the colour changed again to a 4th shade and remained until the end of the war in 1945.
The colours I am showing here have cost me quite a bit of money because they come direct in 1ltr tins of paint direct from the original company that supplied the paints to the German military during the war. They are still doing so today! I tracked them down after coming across some letters in the Frieberg Federal Archive. one letter was from the OKW (German High Command) congratulating the company on maintaining the colour specification with a batch variance of +/- 3% from chipset values despite materiel shortages. Further research showed me that this company was still going and I gained access to their most impressive archive. They have chipset patterns and chipset/samples from every batch of colour they produced and after some buttering up they were more than happy to produce for me samples of each chipset colour which arrived a few days ago. They were formulated for me in Acrylic Enamel to military grade and airbrush ready ( they work great through my 0.4mm Nozzle!) and to the original CMYK formulae and then matched on their specialist equipment to make sure that the match was correct.
Here they are!
Dunkelgelb Nach Muster Feb-Aug 1943
RAL 7028 August 1943- April 1944
RAL 7028 April/May 1944 - November/December 1944
RAL 7028 December 1944 - May 1945
Timeline left to right
I am not saying other colours were not used but without official archive documentation and chipset plus painting orders they are suspect colours. Indeed, the batch samples I saw varied little from the above colours and certainly not the very light and pale almost butter colour that AK and others have in their ranges. I would like to see the documentation and chipset on those!
Let the shock, indignation, armchair know-it alls start throwing the artillery, but I have been to the archives and the company and seen it with my own eyes. and these samples will shortly be winging their way to a modelling paint company in the hope that they will decide to put these in their paint line(s).
James