Here are the Grants for my British 8th Army force. This time, I’ve skipped over including individual shots of each of the Tank Troops, and am just giving you the gist of them with these main pics. The only differences between all of them are the exact stowage I’ve glued down. These were the final models I painted in October, and as you can see above, I decided to paint both the Lee and Grant variant turrets for each of the models to give me further flexibility in how I use them. In my research, reading up and viewing videos on them, I found a note somewhere that talked about how while the majority of the lend-lease tanks had the Grant turret, some in British service did indeed still have the smaller Lee turret with the commander’s machinegun, though the British troops at the time tended to refer to them all as “Grant”. What this tells me is that much like all the “what exact shade is field grey/dunkelgelb/etc” discussions and arguments, the actual truth of the matter on the ground in the field at the time was much less perfectly uniform than we often tend to think about things today from our desks.
While looking for camouflague options to paint my tanks, I found the above boxcover for a model kit, which looked interesting and really piqued my interest.
A little more digging found the above colour plate, with some unit and date references. Looking at the placement of the brown blotches, it seems like they’re both based on the same photograph, which I wasn’t able to locate. I did adjust the unit markings from the photos – I originally tried using yellow circle decals, but the ones I was using (PSC) were almost invisible, so I carefully removed themn off the first couple of models before they were fully set and replaced them with blue squares.
After having completed these Lee/Grants, I actually found that the M3 Stuart at Bovington is painted in the same pattern. Seeing how different the shades are for the brown across the three images I’m not too upset about having chosen a more orangey shade – which was closer to a different image that I seem to not have forgotten to save into my reference folder…. but then again – what exact shade is field grey?
Yet again, a pic to show the four sides of the camouflage pattern applied…
…and the “aerial” shot.
And now we have all twelve completed Grants on the “Desert” flats, alongside their alternative Lee turrets. Yes, I decided to paint a full armoured Squadron of them. When will I use them all? I guess I’ll have to have a real big game sometime this coming summer! 😀
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great tank additions mate, like the colour scheme you’ve gone for, and I’m pretty sure I’ve stood next to that tank in Bovington
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Thanks Dave. I’ve made the trip up to Puckapunyal a couple of times, but we’ve got nothing like Bovington here. Perhaps one day…
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Very cool!
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Cheers, mate!
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Those are really nice! 🙂 I’ve always liked Lees/Grants since Airfix brought out their kit in the ’70s! I think I’d have just mixed up Lees and Grants as you’ve done and a lot of Lees ended up fighting in India/Burma later in the war, frequently with the machine gun cupola replaced with a simpler split hatch cover.
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Oh yeah, I still aren’t ever sure which ones are which in terms of the name. I know which ones are British/US visually at least, but it was definitely interesting to see that both variants were actually in British service – and yeah it’s been interesting to learn about all of the older and lighter tanks that were no longer approriate for Europe that continued to do well in the Pacific for some time onwards…
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Hey, that’s a fun little research project on the camouflage! Nice work. I will freely admit I had no idea how to differentiate between Lee and Grant tanks. I’m off to wikipedia to read more!
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Cheers mate – it’s been quite an interesting time reading up and watching videos on the different tanks and learning their history and about their service. I recommend both The (Bovington) Tank Museum’s YouTube channel as well as The Chieftain as especially interesting and informative ones.
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTankMuseum
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheChieftainWoT
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Those are lovely. I entirely agree with you on shades of paint (although don’t get me started on the photo of all the field grey jackets).
Would be a hell of a game with all the tanks in that you have painted recently.
Cheers,
Pete.
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I’ve seen that photo (or one very much like it – wouldn’t surprise me if there are a few of those around!)
That’s something I definitely want to do over summer. My own little El Alamein. 😀
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Those are some fine-looking tanks!
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Thank you, Mick!
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Very cool – you can see where GW got their ideas for the Leman Russ 😂
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Oh definitely. Not to mention most of the older markings used on Imperial Armour of all kinds are either heavily inspired or directly lifted from the British Desert armour. I haven’t been using them on these tanks since they date from the earlier part of The Desert War than these tanks, but there’s been an awful lot of “oh, I’ve seen *that* before!” as I’ve gone through this project.
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Excellent work on the latest tanks. They match the historical tanks very well and they look visually impressive, most importantly! 🙂 The game when you get to field them all should be a great one as well!
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Thanks Kuribo! We’ve had a very small game with a few of them so far. My knee issues make it a bit harder to get out to the War Room at the moment without it being a bit of an event, but I’m certainly looking forward to it!
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Great work mate ,the lee tanks has always been a favorite of mine!
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Good to hear, Pat! There’s be more of them in green in the coming months…
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