Painting the T-62 Fleet

Soviet paint schemes in the early 1980's seem to have been a single shade of green rather than the multi colour camo schemes which came into use later in the decade. Should be an easy paint job then, right? But no, it isn't that easy. We live on a green world and as a result the human eye is particularly good at distinguishing between shades of green, so it needs to be the right shade. Which begs the question what is the right shade of green for Soviet vehicles. They seem to have used a dark gloss green for parades but a lighter shade in combat environments. Colour photos of early 1980s Soviet vehicles show a range of greens but part of the difference may be the film used, plus the processing of the negatives could impact on the depiction of colour as well! Even the colour settings of my monitor could be having an impact. On top of which with 1/600th models I need to use paint as a fast way of determining which side is which so it can't be the same shade I used for the BAOR vehicles.


In general the photographs show a green similar to a medium olive green but sometimes with a hint of blue in the shade. It's a warmer hue that NATO Olive drab schemes from the 1960s so that helped give me some inspiration.

A BTR-70 showing the final choice of green used

 Eventually I have settled on an undercoat of white with a slightly thinned Vallejo Medium Olive Green over that.  By thinning it the high spots on the castings show some of the white through so kind of pre-highlighting occurs.  I then hit the casting with a coat of satin varnish and firstly ink wash with good old GW Agrax Earthshade then dry brush with Vallejo Bonewhite to which I have added a little olive Green to create a very light green highlight.  It's not exactly the Soviet colour scheme but it is close I'm happy with the results although the KGB political officer may order me to repaint in a more socialist shade at some point.  Oh and in case JBM pops around I didn't paint in the red stars or the turret numbers although I did do the tracks in German grey front and rear!

A T-62 complete with commander manning the Turret MG

So Ivan now has a Company of T-62s at 1:1 ratio and a company of BTR-70s and dismounted infantry will follow very shortly.  For rules like FFOT3 where a single model represents a platoon that is the core of a Motor Rifle Battalion.  An order of T-64s and BMP 1s will give the start of a Tank Battalion from a tank regiment and I probably will not be able to resist some T-72s and T-80s.  Then it's onto support arms.  I have decided that artillery will be an 'off board' asset but some anti tank and anti aircraft vehicles plus close air support will be modelled as on board assets so I need to decide what I want to use for those items.

The assembled ranks of Soviet Armour

Lastly the astute observers will have noticed that the opening paragraphs of  a couple of earlier posts have formatted as centre aligned.  It seems to be something to do with placing an image and centre aligning it and I couldn't for the life of me seem to make it go back to what I actually wanted.  The same thing happened with this post but I solved the issue.  Highlighting the affected paragraphs and using the clear formatting icon seems to break the link to the image formatting and hey presto everything is back as I want it.  I can't claim any credit for this solution as I followed the age old primate methodology of pushing all the buttons until one did something.  Fortunately there were no big red ones marked do not push!