Afrikan Tigers

How many Tigers operated in Africa?What were the paint schemes used?

Thanks

SturmTiger

 

Two units, details will be found on:
http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/tigers.htm

As a point of interest, the first tanks to knock out Tigers were Churchills of my Regiment the North Irish Horse.

Gerry

PS - As soon as I complete a major project you may look for details as to how crews spent their days.

 

Thanks for the info,cool site.looking forward to seeing your Major Project.

Later

SturmTiger

 

I´m not sure about this, and I certainly don´t know about the Tigers. But I believe that in general the AFVs used by the DAK were first given a sand yellow wash on top of the regular "Panzergrey". Later they were painted in a colour which resembled the regular Dark Yellow, but which was somewhat brighter. Could anyone confirm or correct me on this ?

 

The paint scheme was probably a dark yellow or sand base with dark tan or brown camo designs. That is what they probably used but i don't know.

 

As far as I know the Tigers of 501 were painted in a 'sand-olive' colour prior to shipment to Africa. This shade seems to be slightly different to the dunkelgelb (or dark yellow) that became the standard basecoat. Apparantely, although there is nothing to either confirm or deny this, some Tigers were later overpainted in olive drab from captured U.S supplies in order to blend in more in the Tunisian landscape. Turret numbers were just white outline on the base colour. Later this changed to red numbers with a white outline.

The Tigers of 504 were supposedly painted in the same sand-olive colour as the 501 Tigers. Turret numbers were solid red. There seems to be a lot of confusion about all these Africa Tiger colours. I'll have to try and do some digging to see if I can find out more. Opinions change every five minutes.

There doesn't seem to have been any camouflage pattern oversprays at all on the African Tigers though.

 

The photographs I have seen of the alledged green Tigers all appears to have a wavy camouflage pattern, however it is very difficult to spot because of the low contrast. The same can be said about the Dunkelbraun overspray on the Dunkelgrau base of all Panzers until min-1940.

It would seem unlikely tha the Tigers were painted in colours from captured US depots - after all, as far as I'm aware, the Germans were pretty much on a continous retreat at the time the Tigers arrived, and prior to this it would seem more reasonable that the paint had been used on other vehicles.

At least some Tigers were definately painted in a two-colour scheme, though. The paint scheme on the Bovington TIger was a two-colour one, and the glacis plate on the Tiger below has a quite distinct pattern as well.

 

Christian,

I'm not totally convinced of any of these camouflage patterns on African Tigers. I feel it's more likely dirt, grime, colour fading etc etc. All the clear Tiger pics from Africa seem to show just one overall colour but will be convinced if a good clear shot shows up.

Here is the Bovington Tiger shortly after capture. It doesn't look to have a camouflage tone to me. The British markings were added after capture.

 

Here is another shot of the Bovington Tiger 131 just after capture. Again I think mud, grime, rain streaks and dirt gives it the 'look' of camouflage paint in these black and white shots. Or perhaps it's just the undecoat showing through?

 

Tiger 131 was definately painted in two different colours - during restoration, traces of the old paint was discovered:
http://www.tiger-tank.com/secure/journal27.htm

Also, the photograph you supplied shows a clear colouflage pattern. I've emphasised these below.

 

By the way, on my picture, it is very clear that it is not a smudge of some kind, but paint. I've scaled this down to 50% of my original scan to be able to post it here, so it's about 500-600% magnification.

 

Christian,

Ok, point taken. Looks like I was wrong. Damn. The first time I've been 'Tiger rumbled' on this mesaage board. Wolfgang Schneider has a lot to answer for. :angry: :bang: It was his remarks that I was going on. Most of the mistakes in his first volume have been corrected but obviously not the question about camouflage in Africa. The African Tigers aren't my speciality.

I wonder why the majority of other Tigers of the same unit and even company don't seem to have any camouflage added? Whatever the case, the camouflage overspray DOES seem to be the weakest and most peculiar I've seen on Tigers. It doesn't seem to fit any knd of logical pattern.

 

What do you think? Authentic or colour tinted?

 

No problem - I'm somewhat of a Tiger novice myself, having only half a dozen books about it. I'm looking to buy more, but I've had to lower my budget to $100-200 - besides that, I've run out of space to store my books

The reason why many pictures of the Tigers appears as being only mono-coloured is because the contrast of the two colours wasn't really that good. Same thing as with the Panzers in France and Poland - the contrast can hardly be seen on the original photos I have, so once once scanned, converted to rasters and printed, it'll be almost impossible to tell.

I've converted a photograph of the 131 taken in recently (taken from the tiger-tank website), in good lightning conditions with what I assume is a modern camera. As you can see, the contrast is quite low, so how won't it look when taken with a 60-year-odl camera in the stark Africa sun?

As for the green Tiger, it is most definately a black-and-white photo which has been added colours. Look at the strange colours of the track at the left, the very stark and monotone colours and odd appearence of the green colour (almost goo green, rather than olive drab, if that should be the case). Also, notice that both a green and grey colour is visible on the drivers plate, especially to the left of the machine gun - this indicated that this vehicle would too have been dual coloured.

 

Christian,

I thought they did the coloured Tiger pretty well though considering it came from a book almost 15 years old. I liked the metal shine on the tracks, the spray over the spare track links, the smoke grenade launchers and even the yellow flowers and gravel. I was 90 percent sure it was a coulor tint from a black and whit pic but I also felt there was a small chance that it could have been an original colour pic but just that the original colour was a bit off just like it usually is in most of those old pics.

By the way, this pic here seems to be much more intense and richer in tone compared to how the colour is on the actual one I have. The original that I have is more subdued in tone.

 

Christian,

Why do you think the African Tigers had such a weird placement of the camouflage overspray and why is it so weak in tone? It just seems not worth it. Just a bit of colour here, a blob of colour there, dash of colour somewhere else and it certainly wouldn't have been of any practical disruptive use surely? Strange.

I've seen other Tigers from other theatres with a weak and very diluted use of camouflage overspray but they still seem to have covered those vehicled in a more worthwile manner than what I can see in these African ones.

 

Camouflage is really a matter of breaking up shape. Without the green overspray, even though not very strong in colour, it would have been completely yellow, which would have made it stand out a lot. On the other hand, a powerful green colour would have made it stand out very clearly if used in the desert.

The African theater had some wierd camouflage patterns - just look at the blue camouflage of British vehicles...

 

As Tigers in North Africa did not see action in the desert (although promised to Rommel) serious camouflage apparently was not considered necessary before deploying them in Tunisia. The Tigers that I saw were evenly painted, however, as practised by Allied tankers, individual crews had daubed oil on them to which dust had adhered and/or smeared them with dried out mud.

 

Gerry,

That is a most interesting answer seeing as you personally had witness to these Tigers. Previous to this thread I always thought the African Tigers were ALL of a single tone basecoat and I never saw anything to convince me the Tigers had a camouflage overspray. If they did then it must have either been VERY few individual vehicles (not complete unit orders) and the oversprays themselves were more 'artistic' mucking about than anything practical. The tones and patterns as suggested by Christian ( which I belive now to be true) seem too impractical to be of any real destruptive use. From what I've seen in a lot of pictures the darker 'smudges' in African Tigers are more likely to be what you refered to although it's clear there must have been exceptions, however few they might have been.


Christian,

Not only was the green overspray of the Africa Tigers not strong in tone but it also covered very little of the vehicle. I really can't see the practical significance in it. Camouflage is meant to break up the lines. It's no good if you can't notice the difference at range. That's why the Sherman Fireflys had the strong in tone light coloured wavy paint added to the end of the long barrel. From a distance the barrel looked only half as long.

 

ok i know it this shouldnt be here but how dit you come at a medal of honor ???