King Tiger Color

[jarndice]

I find that "Humbrol" Sea Grey is a close match. shaun

[jackalope]

Maybe it's me but field gray has a greenish hue to it which is why I thought it was the color. And I know I'm not color blind.

[billpe]

Dark green? WOW, was I off! Told you to wait till someone else could chime in.

Have a look at the thread I linked, it has a hatch on it from a King Tiger which has the original paint. It's been affected by time but the colour is vivid enough. I'm sure that somewhere in Germany there's some paste or tins of the original stuff buried away. A decade or so back someone found several dozen DB601 engines under a modern airport, had been concreted over, so it's just a matter of time until someone finds a tin or two.

[jackalope]

WOW Bill that is CLEARLY green! I'm SO glad my KT doesn't have green on it or I would have screwed it up BAD! Thanks for clearing it up Bill.

[Jnewboy]

I understand that the color could be a green like RAL 6007 that has faded and perhaps reacted to the red oxide primmer or the Dunkelgelb beneath it but then how do we explain the FoV tanks that have both that color and a deeper green like RAL 6011? I have never heard of two greens being on one King Tiger, and one fading and one not...

So many people hold their 1/16 FoV Kingtiger in such high regards its hard to believe they are all painted wrong

[billpe]

I understand that the color could be a green like RAL 6007 that has faded and perhaps reacted to the red oxide primmer or the Dunkelgelb beneath it but then how do we explain the FoV tanks that have both that color and a deeper green like RAL 6011? I have never heard of two greens being on one King Tiger, and one fading and one not...

So many people hold their 1/16 FoV Kingtiger in such high regards its hard to believe they are all painted wrong

Not all King Tigers were factory painted. For the first few months they left the factory in the standard dark yellow and then would get painted by the crews in the unit colour scheme, which would involve green or brown. Two shades of green could be possible since there were a few shades in the German inventory, however it doesn't really cross check with any book on the topic.

Somewhat ironically the only two model tanks I've seen that come with a fairly good camouflage pattern that looks like the real thing is the HL Porsche King Tiger painted as 506 abt and the Panther G with a factory MAN paint job.

[greengiant]

The HL Herschel turret KT is about as close to being the correct color and pattern for Abt 501 as you can get. Its just missing the little dots. I finished mine as #204 as there are at least four pictures (black and white) of it as US soldiers tried to save it from destruction after its crew ran out of gas and abandoned it completely intact.
The picture of 204 you show is wrong color wise including the blue in white number which should be red in white and the grey which should be green.
These KTs were factory fresh when sent into battle and would have had very little time for the paint to fade any significant amount just road dust coating would be sufficient as a detail along with torn off fenders. Most were never hit by a shot from allied forces before they were all abandoned due to lack of fuel.

[billpe]

It depends on the tank, they had a mixture of older King Tigers with zimmerit, 34 newer tanks in the standard scheme and then got some tanks from 509 (not the SS one) which were probably older and in whatever scheme 509 painted them. Remember though, only prior to the standardised pattern did battalions pick and choose a scheme which the crews painted. So after a certain period, all your king tigers, no matter what unit, if they were delivered after that date would look near enough the same.

Yeah, SS panzer abteilung 501 2.Schwere was white outlines with red infill, 1. schwere was white outlines with black infill, 3.Schwere was yellow outlines with blue infill. It did however have some tanks with yellow numerals spread through out the companies.

[Jnewboy]

What about the whitewash? how many of this group of KingTigers had whitewash on them?

[billpe]

Don't exactly know but it was fairly rare. Some in Hungary did.