Chieftain Mk10 - Berlin Brigade 1/72

I have had the pleasure of building the 1/35 Takom offering of the Mk10 some years ago, and even produced and sold a Berlin Brigade mask set for it through my website, (workbenchhobbies.com). When I saw Takom were planning the 1/72 scale version I immediately decided I had to rescale my mask set and put it to the test on this mini version of the Chieftain.

A brief history

During the early 80’s, it became blindingly obvious that the Deep Green print schemes of the British army vehicles were far from suitable when set amongst an urban backdrop. It was observed by the Commanding Officer of the 4/7 Royal Dragoon Guards tank squadron in Berlin, that the urban setting was essentially made up of straight lines and an alternative to the camouflage schemes should be sort out.

Experimenting with cardboard cut outs of the Chieftain in the windows of his office, the Major experimented with the placement of different size squares and rectangles over the shape of the tank. He found he was able effectively to disguise the shape of the tank through the use of these shapes.

The colour palette of Blue Grey, NATO Brown and White were chosen as it was felt these colours selected the colours of the environment they were in. It was found that the scheme should work with blocks of colour, approximately eighteen inches square and should not be scaled up or down for different vehicle