Camouflage on the tanks at the Australian Tank Museum, Puckapunyal, Victoria.

Closer view.

Tanks with just a faint hint of camouflage left.

Camouflage in an almost jigsaw like pattern.

Before 1942 there was little standardisation in paint schemes for Imperial Japanese Army armour. In fact for the majority of the War! Most vehicles were painted in a hard-edged camouflage scheme with distinctive yellow stripes. The exact colours and how they were applied remains a complicated and confusing subject which for historians in problematic, but from a wargaming perspective the argument tends to be about which colour was the first coat green or artillery brown which is hampered by descriptions and names of colours being inconsistent between different sources.

Tanks with a wavy line pattern.

The official instructions from the Imperial Japanese Army on how tanks were to be painted are quite well documented. But just how closely these were followed is much debated. More likely those on the ground used what was available rather than what was the official edict.

Official instructions called for vehicles to be painted in “tsuchi kusa iro”, a khaki colour  known to the US as “Japanese Artillery Brown.” Roughly 30% of the vehicle was painted in disruptive patterns of a dark “tsuchi iro” or mahogany brown.

In 1942 this changed to “kusa iro”, or army green in summer or jungle areas in the south. More often the green was just added as an additional colour, rather than the base, which is what I have done. Like the multi-coloured French tanks these were sometimes separated by a thin black line.

There is also much speculation about the yellow cross lines on the tanks. Yellow wavy lines were applied in a rough cross shape when viewed from above, centred on the top of the vehicle. There is some dispute about the actual colour of these lines. Some researchers have theorised that it was actually a sandy, ‘dry grass’ colour, which was described as ‘yellow’ because that is how it looked in contrast with the darker camouflage colours. This is certainly a plausible hypothesis, because the low contrast result is more in keeping with camouflage theory at the time. The You-tube video below also suggests it maybe trying to mimic how the sun rays break up the outline of the tank (?).

There is an excellent article from Nick Kohima who has translated the Japanese WW2 Camouflage manual which I found after painting the tanks! @#$%*^!

The article can be found here.

An excellent You-tube video can be found here.

Butlers Printed Models Ha-Go

I used the following colours for the tank:

• Brown: VJ 984 Flat brown
• Tamyiay TS3 Spray
• Green: VJ 823 Luftwaffe camo green
• Yellow: GW Sunburst Yellow

Further information can be found here:

Jowett, Philip. MAA 362 The Japanese Army 1931-45 (1), Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2002.

Millman, Nick. Japanese Armour Colours, A Primer, 1937-1945, 2012.

Zaloga, Steven J. NV 137 Japanese Tanks 1939-45, Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2007.