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What shade of green

1

13th battalion

Active Member
H,I've got a 1943 b166 II ammunition and as I've rubbed the black paint off, I was expecting brown or olive drab but the green that has come through is more like a pea green. It isn't the same shade as the other box I did. Also there is no other colour and no writing. Anybody any ideas what shade of green this is and why there is no writing?
thanks
steve
 
Service packages were all painted Deep Bronze Green, until about 1943, then this was changed to Service Brown. There were still plenty of green boxes around into the 60s, particularly in obscure overseas ammo depots, particularly mortar boxes like your B166.
Perhaps the markings have worn off or the package was overpainted green over the original green, before the black was put on.
 
This green seems to be a very pale green compared to the other box I have. I was just wondering why the difference in colour. I thought it was all standardised. Also under the black,there's only the green. The other box, had green over brown over blue.
 
Thanks for that, the colour looks to be closest to the sea green. I was wondering why it wasn't over painted with brown. Was the a reason the pale green was used?
 
When new marking systems are introduced, all the thousands of tons of ammunition in various packages do not change colour overnight and will probably stay that way until they have been used up by natural wastage, unless there is some operational reason to repaint them.
You said there was some traces of blue paint on an earlier Box Steel B 166.
This would normally be in the square where the handles are and in a 'U' shape on the raised portion around the hinges.
This indicated the numbers and fillings of certain augmenting cartridges on each bomb in the package.
 
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I should also have said the U shaped raised area around the hasps was also painted blue.
It indicated that the Bombs 3"were only suitable for short range use. Each bomb only had 2 x 100 grain cartridges i.e. 12 per box. Later on the boxes were marked with the number per bomb instead of the total number in the box.

As I have already said, a piece of paper floated down from on high saying that certain changes were taking place from such and such. In reality when this was said, one Royal Ordnance Factory who had just finished a repaint job got a bid in to the paint suppliers and hogged the lot. Another ROF which was half way through a massive repaint job and had all the paint of the old colour to complete the job, found that when it finished the new paint was all gone, so carried on with the old paint until they could get a supply, but to keep working they got the other ROF to let them have any of the old colour they had left so that they could keep going. So some times things did not happen immediately.

I said before that in 1943 the colour of general boxes e.g. SAA, HE shell/mortars etc., which had no reason to be made distinctive for any reason, changed from the then deep bronze green colour to Service Brown No 2, but not overnight.

There are however some overall package colours which have to be distinctive because of the repercussions they could cause. If in WWII we had suddenly started to use Mustard Gas against the enemy, purely because someone accidentally issued some to the artillery by mistake, believing them to be HE, the repercussions would be enormous. Stocks were held in all ammunition depots in case the enemy started using it first, in contravention of the rules of war at that time.
To obviate this Chemical ammunition packages, then and now, are painted grey.



There were other significant package colours used. All smoke producing packages were painted Sea Green, as opposed to dark green, which indicates that your B166 package originally contained smoke bombs.

Dull Red indicated incendiary ammunition and Bright Red for Blank ammunition.
 
Interestingly enough, further to the procurement woes I have already outlined, I have just found that in May 1942,' to overcome the difficulties in the supply of Service Brown paint for ammunition packages, the use of dark brown, as a substitute has been approved'.
 
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