Prior to 1938, all RKKA vehicles, both armored and soft-skin, were painted in a dark olive green color designated Green 3B.  In 1938, this color was changed to a nearly identical green known as Protective Green 4BO, which persisted as the basic color until the end of the war.

There has been much debate about the exact nature of Protective Green 4BO, and the subject has inspired much heated argument.  These arguments have been exacerbated by variations in the color due to inexact mixing at the various factories, and due to fading in the field under the effects of temperature and the elements.  Color degradation in surviving color photographs has not helped the situation, nor has the fact that many of the vehicles photographed during Operation Barbarossa in 1941 were extremely dusty, which altered their apparent color.

RKKA paint mixing instructions from 1941 specify that Protective Green 4BO was a mixture of 40-60% yellow ochre, 15-20% zinc chromate, 10% ultramarine and 10-20% white.  If these instructions are followed using modern equivalents, the result is a range of fairly light greens with a distinct yellow tint, close to FS34257 and quite similar to the color seen on the preserved vehicles at the CAF Museum in Moscow, even though those vehicles are painted using a post-war paint commonly known as 'Warsaw Pact Green'.  The similarity to FS34257 is supported by a number of surviving color photographs, after accepted industry-standard color correction techniques are applied.

The chemical composition of the paint was not entirely stable however, and tended to darken over time when exposed to the elements.  The color mixture given above, and its FS 595 equivalent, is therefore applicable only to newly painted vehicles and even then, only to those painted with 'fresh' paint stocks.

Kolomiyets and Moschanskiy (see below) cite official Soviet records, examined in the 1990s, as containing a somewhat darker and color with more blue, which approximates closely to FS34102.  It must be remembered that the ‘official’ paint chips were no doubt stored in an office environment, in darkness under relatively constant conditions of temperature and humidity, which would likely have slowed though not completely halted any chemical action.

When the U.S. Army evaluated both a T-34 and a KV-1 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in November 1942, the colors were noted as FS24052, which is darker still.  The KV was manufactured at ChKZ in April 1942, and the paint was therefore approximately seven months old when it arrived at the Aberdeen Proving Ground.  Chemical darkening due to the age of the paint and its likely exposure to the elements during its journey from Chelyabinsk to the U.S. would account for the darker color.

Given these facts, it is reasonable to assume that Soviet vehicles appeared in a variety of olive green shades.  These ranged from FS34257 for newly manufactured vehicles through FS34096 and FS34095 to FS24052 for older vehicles.  The shade depended not only on the age of the paint but also on the conditions of sunlight and temperature to which it had been subjected.

~ Craig ~