What you want doesn't really exist in a single volume and those that do exist go between brief, specific to a single tank to complete fantasy.
I spent quite a while on each tank I've made trying to get it exact and the whole thing is a minefield of made up and misleading information. There's a couple of general golden rules you can go by though:
There were set periods of time when tanks were painted a single colour, be that grey, grey and brown or dark yellow.The information on this fairly easy to find and verified by Jentz and Doyle.
There was a set period of time when they were delivered from the factory pre-painted in 2 or 3 colour (2 being tropical, 3 being yellow, brown, green).
There was a period where they were painted by crews, roughly between the end of 1942 and mid 1944 (there are some exceptions). The painting was usually done inline with Battalion, Company or Division directives. There are exceptions to this but they are quite specific to certain units.
Specific tanks like the Panther had very specific camouflage schemes later on as they were based on patterns individual to the factory. You can tell where a Panther was built due to this. There are a few exceptions.
Your best bet is investigate the tank you want specifically. So if you want a Tiger from 1943, that fought at Kursk this is dead easy to find the colours and layout. Same with a King Tiger from Ardennes with a good certainty. A Panzer IV from 1943 in Russia? Good luck on that one. Lots of best guesses.
If you see an drawing of a German tank on the internet it's very likely to be wrong when it comes to the colours, even the ones that people like Peddinghaus use are highly questionable. I got the AK book on it and they also contradict in a number of examples of other research.
jackalope wrote:That book would be so thick I don't see how it could be printed! The factory didn't camouflage most tanks the crews did. Then there's what year it was made, who made it, what factory, what "lot" of paint was used, which tank it was and then yes some tanks the factory DID camouflage. That would be one THICK ass book!
The period where crews were allowed to paint their own tanks was only a fraction of the time where they were delivered prepainted either in a single unalterable colour or camouflaged in 3.
