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Old 11-12-2014, 08:37 PM   #1
SteampengMK-1
 
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Default Army colors for an setting help

Hello there fellow forum dwellers, Steampeng here.

I'm just wondering, I'm making an greatwarish setting and could use some help in which colors work best.

Here what I got so far
CENTRAL Powers(Green)
US:Tan/Blue
Germany:Black, green
Austria-Hungary: light grey, red
Japan:yellow
Ottoman:Khaki

Entente(Blue)
the 2nd Confederacy: Grey and black
Great Britain: Dark brown, red and white
Britain commonwealths: Blue and white
Russia:White
France:Blue and red

How the choice of color?
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Old 11-12-2014, 08:43 PM   #2
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Army colors for an setting help

Quote:
Originally Posted by SteampengMK-1 View Post
Hello there fellow forum dwellers, Steampeng here.

I'm just wondering, I'm making an greatwarish setting and could use some help in which colors work best.
What are these colors going to be used for? Uniforms, flags, interior décor?
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Old 11-12-2014, 08:59 PM   #3
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Default Re: Army colors for an setting help

Remember of the TL of the tactics include quick reloaded firearms, Uniform colors are designed NOT to stand out

but before that the designed to stand out so you can easily tell friend from foe in a grand mêlée
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Old 11-12-2014, 11:25 PM   #4
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Default Re: Army colors for an setting help

During the mid-late 19th century (the end of the period of highly colored battlefield uniforms), most soldiers with the exception of the British wore blue uniforms of various shades. Individual regiments within any given army might wear drastically different uniforms, often to differentiate regional origin and/or elite status. Troops in the tropics were often the first to switch to khaki.

That said, in anything like the Great War, visibility is suicide. Grey, green, and tan will be (or quickly become) the standards. In some cases, the old colors continued (some to today) to be used for ceremonial uniforms, however.
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Old 11-13-2014, 01:21 AM   #5
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Default Re: Army colors for an setting help

I thought certain shades of blue worked well enough as camo (compared to plain khaki or green-gray or whatever)?
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Old 11-13-2014, 04:30 AM   #6
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Default Re: Army colors for an setting help

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Originally Posted by NorphTehDwarf View Post
I thought certain shades of blue worked well enough as camo (compared to plain khaki or green-gray or whatever)?
Blues work better as cammo at night than black does. Dark =/= black.
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Old 11-13-2014, 04:56 AM   #7
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Default Re: Army colors for an setting help

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Originally Posted by NorphTehDwarf View Post
I thought certain shades of blue worked well enough as camo (compared to plain khaki or green-gray or whatever)?
The French replaced their red and blue uniforms with bleu horizon in 1915. I've heard that the idea was that it was supposed to camouflage a standing or advancing soldier seen against a hazy horizon, also that it has something to do with the "blue line of the Vosges", the Vosges being the range of low mountains on the 1871–1918 border between France and Germany. The Vosges is covered with forests are hazy bluish in the distance.

Bleu horizon sorta-kinda worked as a camouflage colour — better than madder red pants and navy blue coat, anyway — but they replaced it with kaki (a slightly lighter and grey tint that the British khaki) in 1935.
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Old 11-13-2014, 05:03 AM   #8
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Default Re: Army colors for an setting help

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Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
During the mid-late 19th century (the end of the period of highly colored battlefield uniforms), most soldiers with the exception of the British wore blue uniforms of various shades.
Another significant factor is what is your synthetic organic chemistry industry like. One of the reasons blue was popular was that indigo and Prussian blue were fairly cheap, and a bit later aniline, the first of the synthetic dyes in our timeline, is blue. Drab yellow browns (khaki, mazari, butternut and the like) is also an easy color for vegetable dyes (I think a lot of it was mulberry). I think the dark grey-greens (feldgrau, olive drab, rifle green, hunter green) are synthetics, though lighter shades of dull green are available in vegetable dyes.

Historically the dye industry takes off about 1870 in Germany, so in a slightly different history you could be fighting something Greatwarish before there is much variety in cheap dye - the end of the American Civil War (1864-5) had quite a bit of the same kind of trench war after all.
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Old 11-13-2014, 05:38 AM   #9
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Default Re: Army colors for an setting help

Quote:
Originally Posted by SteampengMK-1 View Post
I'm making an greatwarish setting
Something to do with the Great War 1914–1919? I notice that you have the US and Japan on the side of the Central Powers, and a New Confederacy, so presumably this is an alternative history of some sort.

Quote:
and could use some help in which colors work best.
Work best for what?

Comments on your suggestions:

Quote:
US:Tan/Blue
The US Army colour is traditionally blue. The US national cockade was blue with a gold eagle.
Quote:
Germany:Black, green
Green? Why? The national colours of the German Empire were red, white, and black. The traditional colour of their uniforms before they switched to feldgrau (field grey) was white with a Prussian blue coat, except in Bavarian units that wore light blue.
Quote:
Austria-Hungary: light grey, red
Grey is okay. I wouldn't use red. The Austrian cockade was black and gold until 1918. The traditional colour of the uniforms of the Austrian Empire was white. They switched to blue tunics about the time they changed name to Austria-Hungary, and then to "pike grey" between about 1900 and 1915. (Then to German feldgrau.)
Quote:
Japan:yellow
Why yellow? That seems an odd choice, and you want to avoid associations with the racist phrase "the Yellow Peril". The national flag is red and white, the cockade is red with a white edge, and the army uniforms were blue until the Russo-Japanese War and then khaki (called "mustard").
Quote:
Ottoman:Khaki
Khaki was more metonymically associated with the British Empire. Teh Ottoman national flag and cockade were red and white. The Ottoman Army flag was red over green.
Quote:
the 2nd Confederacy: Grey and black
What confederacy is this?
Quote:
Great Britain: Dark brown, red and white
Odd. Dark brown?
Britain's national colours (like most countries') are red, white, and blue. The traditional colour of British army tunics was an extremely distinctive red. On their maps, their bits were coloured red. Red is very much the distinctive colour of the British, though the British cockade had for a long time been black.
From about the time of the First Boer War onwards the British uniforms changed to khaki, and as a result of the notoriety of the Boer Wars "khaki" became a metonym for the Army and militarism in Britain and for British military adventurism outside it.
May I suggest khaki and red for the British?
Quote:
Britain commonwealths: Blue and white
What is this? The British Commonwealth is the name that the Empire took on from the 1920s. Do you mean the Empire? Or do you mean the Dominions? Is India included?
Why blue and white? Let me suggest khaki without British red.
Quote:
Russia:White
The traditional colour of Russian army coats was dark green.
Quote:
France:Blue and red
Good. The French National colours are red, white, and blue, but that is hardly distinctive. The traditional colour of French Army uniforms shortly before WWI was a navy-blue tunic and bright madder-red pantaloons.
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Last edited by Agemegos; 11-13-2014 at 07:30 PM.
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Old 11-13-2014, 10:28 AM   #10
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Default Re: Army colors for an setting help

The US Army blues would have been the dull well-worn blue you see in Westerns, not the splendiferous pomposity of a Marine at some national totem, don't forget. At that the Westerns might get it wrong as they don't allow for dust. I can't say for certain as a hard ride around Monument Valley might have the same affect on dozens of stunt doubles as spending several days out chasing Hostiles would in real life cavalry, especially if John Ford took the trouble to order them on a hard ride.

Likewise, red coat means brick red not the scarlet of palace guards swaggering their sartorial militarism at Buckingham Palace. Though in fact there were British officers who preferred red to khaki for colonial wars as psychological warfare.
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