BRITISH CAMOUFLAGE PAINTING

OF VEHICLES IN

THE MIDDLE EAST

The camouflage painting of British vehicles in the Second World War has long been a neglected subject. Part of the reason for this is that official documents and orders have remained out of reach of the public under British law due to the thirty-year secrecy act. However all this changed when Michael Starmer began publishing a series of very detailed books describing the main camouflage painting schemes of British vehicles, based on his research work from the British National Archives as well as other sources. At about the same time, Shane Lovell in Australia uncovered many of the official British orders from Australian War Memorial archives.

The aim of this website is to describe the less well-known camouflage schemes of the British army in the Middle East. Furthermore, a review of the popular “Caunter” camouflage scheme will be given. The topics that will be discussed are:

• Summary of Middle East camouflage

• Sudan Camouflage

• Palestine & Transjordan (P&TJ)

• Western Desert – the “Caunter” scheme

Virtually all of the photographs taken during this period were with Black and White film. With this in mind, a section discussing the various photographic methods in use is described at:

• Black and White film

The majority of the documents on which this website is based, have been kindly passed on to me by either Michael Starmer or Shane Lovell, with whom I have also had many email discussions. David Fletcher of the Tank Museum, Bovington has also contributed several documents and articles from The Tank Museum library. However I would like to point out, that not all of the information presented on this website has been unanimously agreed on yet and may not necessarily represent the opinion of either Michael or Shane.

Mark Mackenzie

August 2004