not-TOYS Publishing

Panzer Camouflage Volume 1

Wehrmacht Divisions Camouflage Patterns in WWII

This book is published by a firm new to me, not-TOYS from Estonia. They have an interesting website www.not-toys.com which provides some background on this company. The vehicle profiles and other artwork in this book are done by author / artist Igor Donchik. It is the intention of the author to eventually have a ten volume set of these books published. The third volume in this set, a book on WWII Red Army camouflage patterns is currently in development.

The subject of this volume, and future books in this series (that I’m aware of as I write this) are of very good interest to WWII armor modelers and historians. The cover promises much of interest within the book, let’s take a look.

Vital Statistics

Format - hardcover, portrait format

Page Count -  128 pages

Size - 8.5” x 10.5”

Photos - none

Tables / drawings / diagrams - full color artwork throughout

All text and photograph captions are in English.

A satin bookmark ribbon is attached to the book’s binding.

What's between the Covers?

Above - the book’s table of contents, which interestingly is located at the end of the book rather than at the beginning? Perhaps things are done differently in Estonia…regardless, the table of contents is quite clear as to what we will find in this volume.

The book’s various chapters open with an examination of insignia used by the units, from divisional emblems all the way down to company or tactical levels. In some cases, history of the units is discussed.

The bulk of this volume consists of artist renderings of various vehicles camouflage and markings, done in full color as seen above. Examples of vehicle numbering, unit insignia and a RAL color representation of the color(s) that the vehicle were painted in are presented in small inset panels.

Some of the pages (such as pictured above) are arranged so that the book must be rotated 90 degrees to view them in a normal horizontal orientation. This is by no means a problem, and simply means that the renderings can be somewhat larger.

The above image is misidentified as an Sd Kfz 131, Panzer II chassis mounting a 7.5 PaK 40 gun. The vehicle pictured is in fact a Bison, a Panzer I chassis sporting a sIG -33 infantry gun. While by no means a total deal breaker, you must be aware that there can be identification mistakes in this book. 

Interestingly, the book opens with a page from the author containing a message where he explains his vision regarding this book series, and notes that;

“it is often not realistic to recreate with 100% accuracy from the photos of the time, and somewhere there may be mistakes, but I tried to take into account these nuances, and in the future I will try to recreate the technique of that period with even greater scrupulousness and painstakingness, as well as to add interesting details and improve the design and rendering.”

The page layouts are nicely done, without crowding. Plenty of space is allowed for the images, captions for the images, and for the smaller insets showing specific markings and colors. 

Above - interesting images of differing tactical markings on the turrets 4th Panzer division Panzer III’s to the left, with nice images of Sd Kfz 138/1 Grille camouflage to the right.

The vehicles shown in this volume are typically shown in either single or dual aspect, as the Panzer IV above is. While not a definitive all-around viewing, these views ought to be adequate to get all but the most picky of modelers pointed in the correct direction for their paint jobs. 

The focus of this volume is almost 100% on paint and markings for tanks, there is very little coverage of other vehicles ( trucks or staff vehicles ) similar to the Mercedes staff car shown in the image above. As there are a total of ten volumes envisioned by the author, perhaps more extensive coverage of these other vehicles will be addressed in the future?

Above - captured enemy tanks ( Beute panzers ) are shown in a later chapter of this book, with the focus being on captured Soviet equipment, namely KV tanks. Again, much room for expanding on this theme exists for later volumes in the series.

The book’s final tank focused chapter is a look at fictional “what if” tanks, from a sort of alternate history perspective. As there seems to be plenty of sustained interest in this area, many will find this section of the book to be vastly interesting. Above - the interesting Löwe tank, an actual design from Krupp which was designed and never produced, dropped in favor of the even larger Maus design from later in the war.

Text

Near the end of the book, a couple of additional non-vehicular subjects are addressed, the first is a selection of WWII road signs as placed by both Axis and Allied forces in various theaters of operation. English language translations are provided for the non-English signs, a thoughtful touch.

Above - Another non-vehicle section examines such things as oil drum paint and markings, with a wide selection of tactical markings shown as well.

Conclusions

This is quite an extensive project that the author has undertaken given the wide variety of paint and markings schemes used by the Germans in WWII on their huge line of vehicle types and units. Even more impressive is the authors stated intent to write (and provide detailed drawings) for a total of ten volumes in this series.

The drawings are finely done, and appear to be uniformly scaled throughout the book at slightly larger than 1/35 scale in size. Not all Panzer types and models are represented in these pages, but there is a wide variety shown. It will be interesting to see future volumes in this series, and what those volumes will cover. The detail inset drawings of tactical or unit markings, and the panels showing RAL German color standard designations are a nice touch. These will also be of great use to a modeler.

For the author being a non-native English speaker, the text is generally well written and of good interest despite some very minor typos, with good descriptions of what’s pictured in the drawings. With so many vehicles being addressed in a volume of this size and range, a misidentification of a single vehicle as mentioned in the body of the review can be overlooked IMHO. 

This is very solid and promising start to what should become a very valuable reference source for WWII modelers!

Highly Recommended

Thanks to David Doyle Books for the review copy

Reviewed by Chuck Aleshire, AMPS Chicagoland

AMPS 2nd Vice President, Midwest Regions

If you liked this review, consider joining AMPS. Your annual membership
includes six copies of AMPS's magazine, Boresight,
and helps to support our ongoing reviews.

Click here for more information about joining AMPS