Painting Jeeps

I was in JROTC, ROTC and the USAR between 1970 and 1992.  This is the shade I remember as being used for most US Army vehicles at the time.  It is sort of a gray olive drab.  I don't know how accurate my memory is about that, but it's what I have chosen to use since I discovered it about 10 years ago.

Rust-Oleum calls it Deep Forest Green.

The light in these photos make it look more gray than olive.  

Roco M38 Jeeps that have never been painted getting some paint finally.

First they had the flash trimmed and all the parts replaced, restored, or adjusted to fit.  Often the wheels don't turn so the axles need to be bent, or the glue scrapped out of the tires and wheel well.  I have a lot of M38 Jeeps, when Roco and later Paul Heiser finally did a Willys Jeep for WWII a lot of these came out on the surplus market.  So I picked up about 100 of them  here and there.  Now I am working on bringing them back to life. I have had to resin cast a few wheels and gas cans, those often go pretty quickly.  Some I put a plastic sheet in the rear and use them with mounted machine guns or other weapons that don't really need to rear seat; those seem to go missing a lot too.

Roskopf made a 2 1/2 ton truck that was essentially a copy of the Roco.  One version had the canvas and the other had a bunch of tiny soldiers riding in the back.  I cut out the troops and now use them for Jeep drivers and passengers.  I also use a few of the Roco soft plastic figures too, but strangely those are actually kind of large to work well as drivers.  Often they go in the back seat.
 

Camouflage

Decades ago I got a bunch of Roco WWII 2 1/2 ton trucks, van body and cargo truck with both styles of front fender painted in this interesting but rather WWII German looking camouflage.

Obviously someone air brushed them, using three different colors, but they seemed to have intentionally left bare patches of plastic, perhaps they never got around to spraying the forth color, or maybe planned to leave the black green of the plain plastic as is.

I use a big brush and dab on Testors 1165 Flat Olive to cover the bare spots.  I think it looks better than the plain plastic.

Overall I think it is a nice effect and although it does not seem to be a very "American" camouflage I like it well enough to keep it like this.

Vehicles in these markings had either WWII German crosses, or red stars, or white stars on them.

I guess the previous owner considered this a universal camouflage.

Apart from removing the old decals and painting the tires and bare spots I have not done much to them.

My plan is to use them as WWII or 1950s US Army depending on the vehicle.  There are a lot of M38 Jeeps in the bunch.

I think it looks pretty cool.
 

Anti-Tank Strong Point

Two different ways to have the Roco 37mm anti-tank gun.  Some of mine are in good enough shape that the trails can be opened and others are glued together for strength.

Jeep tows the next gun into position.

Troops man the gun.  Airfix WWII USMC old version.

Watching.  

The trees are from Marx Toys, probably 60 years old.  The road is asphalt roofing shingle.

Roco 2 1/2 ton truck.  I got about two dozen Roco vehicles painted in this camouflage, but without the wheels painted and with bare plastic patches.  I covered the bare spots, added a driver, and painted the tires.

Everyone together for an anti-tank strong point.
 

50 Caliber & AT Guns

My Roco US Army 37mm anti-tank guns have been in disarray for a long time, now they are getting some work.

A couple of trucks getting their camouflage touched up.  Note the photo in the upper left.

A soldier in Europe in WWII took some scrape bits and made a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a carriage to tow being a Jeep.

So I took the shield, wheels, axle, and one of the trails from a 37mm gun that was missing the barrel and one trail and made the .50 caliber towed gun.

I cut down the shield on the 37mm gun, added the wire cutter from a Roco Willy's Jeep as the supports, and added an extra .50 caliber machine gun ammo box as extra ammunition.  

The original Roco 37mm anti-tank gun.

Front view.

Some of these I build so the trails can be opened or closed.

Slightly damaged ones get the trails glued together, like this one.

Others get glued down on a sheet of plastic with the trails open.

Underside view.

Paul Heiser Jeep, Airfix MP and 37mm by Roco.

Guns on plastic card get flocked.