Commanders!
Apart from the American (Tunisia) camouflage, there’s another free camo coming that we’d like to tell you about and that we hope you’ll like – a Soviet WW2 camouflage.
Camouflage trials, October 1941
Right off the bat – the usual way the Soviets (and anyone else, really) camouflaged their vehicles for winter was to simply paint them white using whatever paint there was at hand. A dark object (especially a moving one) is extremely noticeable against white backdrop and a simple coat of paint significantly reduced the chance of being spotted within seconds.
But there’s another element to the camouflage equation – the vehicle’s silhouette. Tanks have distinctive silhouettes that can easily be recognized at first glance, which is why various shape-breaking camouflages (also referred to as “silhouette breakers”) were developed. Such camouflages consisted of irregular spots (the irregularity is extremely important here) not only make the tank less visible, but they also make it much harder to estimate the distance to the target with naked eye. Long before laser rangefinders were invented, this was actually an incredibly important advantage to have.
Soviet T-34 tanks, Winter 1941
In this case, roughly 60 to 70 percent of the vehicle was painted white with the rest covered by the 4BO green paint. The green spots were then covered by a net of thin white stripes. This camouflage type was officially tested in the September and October of 1941 at GABTU proving grounds. It was found out that the camouflage was quite effective at longer distances where the green areas became harder to spot as the grid appeared blurred to a naked eye. It was also very useful in winter urban environments.
On the down side, this particular camouflage type camouflage was costly and slow to apply – it took 6 to 8 hours to paint a tank this way and that’s excluding the full clean-up recommended beforehand. Since tanks would by their very nature become dirty really quick, it wasn’t seen as exactly efficient. Subsequently, this type of camouflage mostly appeared early in the war and became quite rare as the years went by.
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As usual, this camouflage will be available for all environments and will be available in the future as a part of an event along with the already announced Object 225.
We hope that you will enjoy all of these and, as always:
See you on the battlefield!
