Czechoslovak Colors and Camouflage for World of Tanks

Author: Silentstalker


Hello everyone,

with the upcoming Czechoslovak branch in World of Tanks this year, the question that is often asked is "what will the color of the tanks be" and "are there any interesting inscriptions for the branch"? Both are very good questions - about the color first then. The option I consider most likely is some form of olive drab. Olive drab was sometimes used before the war in the Czechoslovak army. Here, we can see it on pre-war Škoda MU-4 tankette:

After the war, the color was widely adopted for the Czechoslovak army tanks of Soviet origin, although the tones do somewhat vary:

This color generally appeared on the T-54 and T-72 series as well:

No, the camouflage, that's a bit more interesting. The basic "summer" camouflage will likely be the three-color pattern. This was the most widely used camouflage on the Czechoslovak tanks of the 30's and was partially used by the Germans during the war as well (it appeared on the Jagdpanzer 38t vehicles). It consists of dark yellow, olive and brown fields and typically looks like this:

Some of the representations of this color scheme are much brighter, like the original "Aberdeen" camouflage of the American LT Vz.35 (which was brought back to Czechoslovakia and properly restored). This is how it looked on our most famous tank, the LT Vz.38:

Now, there are other options for camouflage as well - this is the Slovak LT-38 (LT-38 was the fascist Slovakia designation for LT Vz.38) in a double-tone "washed out" olive drab camouflage.

Prototypes usually came in "factory metallic grey" color - but unless we want a color very similar to the German vehicles, I think it should be generally avoided (unless anyone wants to introduce it as a camouflage). Here, we can see it on one of the first local-produced tanks, the Škoda SU prototype.

Another shade of grey would be the "factory grey, matt", but that was quite uncommon (and easily mixed with the German colors). Here you can see it on the AH-IV tankette:

And here is my favourite, the gorgeous "Vltava 1978" camouflage that can in theory serve as winter camouflage:

Czechoslovak vehicles served in foreign countries as well and those camouflages could in theory be used, but so far, these are the basics. There were much more "exotic" variants as well (I still have to scan those), should be interesting.