This book examines the camouflage painting and insignia used on armoured vehicles of the combatant powers during the campaigns at the beginning of the war in Europe in 1939 and 1940. As it is aimed primarily at the serious historical modeller, several technical matters should be discussed. It has long been accepted dogma in the hobby community that a replica should be finished in precisely the same shade of paint that was used on ihe original vehicle. This seems logical enough, and has led to proliferation of paint chips, authentic colour mixes and so on. Unfortunately, it ignores the important size difference between a real tank and a 1/76 or 1/35 scale replica and the resultant visual discrepancy. The perception of colour by the human eye varies between large and small objects: a replica, if painted in exactly the same shade as the full-size original, will appear to be distinctly darker. To test this yourself, when you next visit an army exhibition, take with you a colour chip of the current camouflage colour. If you stand about one hundred feet away from a vehicle freshly painted in the same colour as the chip, you will notice that the small chip appears darker than the vehicle. Place the chip on the vehicle, and they will match. The complex reasons for this discrepancy have been dealt with in more detail in a number of articles, especially Ian Huntley's *A Question of Scale Colour*.