West German NATO 3 Colour Painting Templates

German NATO 3 Colour Painting Templates

NATO 3 Colour Camo Templates
With Aaron Te Hira-Mathie

Before the advent of the standard NATO 3 colour camouflage scheme, most of the member nations painted their equipment in different schemes. By the early 1980s the organisation came to a collective conclusion that during war this would make it quite easy for an enemy to identify which army they were up against, therefore conferring a possible advantage in combat.
It was determined that a standard camouflage scheme should be developed. After some discussion and trials a paint scheme that consisted of a medium green, a red-tinted brown and a grey-black (which fades from close to black to close to grey) was formally accepted in 1984.

This change in scheme also conferred the benefit of taking advantage in advances in paint technology, allowing some infra-red spectrum diffusion and limited protection against chemical warfare agents. West Germany was the first NATO nation to start applying the scheme to their vehicles during scheduled refit operations.

The paint scheme is generally applied by organisations that are specially equipped to deal with the hazardous properties of the chemically resistant paint. As part of the application process each type of vehicle (or equipment) is painted to a template that has been developed specifically for that vehicle, with a spray gun giving the pattern a soft edged look when viewed from fairly short distances. This means that each every vehicle of a particular type (for example Leopard 2) has the same camo scheme applied in the same way.

The NATO 3 Colour Camo Templates

Thanks to a mixture of real life photos and large scale modellers Aaron managed to piece together templates for every vehicle as he painted them for the Studio army. Casey has used our models to take photos from each angle so that you can replicate the patterns.

Here you can find PDF versions of our painting templates.

PDF

Low Res Version
Here you can find a low res version of the painting templates, perfect if you are looking to print them out

Make sure you tell your PDF viewer to print them at actual size and not shrink to fit

PDF

High Res Version
This is the High Res version, great for those of you that have tablets or smart phones and want to really zoom in. You can also print this version if you want.

NATO 3 Colour Painting Templates NATO 3 Colour Painting Templates
High Res Templates For All German Vehicles Low Res Templates For All German Vehicles


Last Updated On Tuesday, April 13, 2021 by Luke at Battlefront