Hi Guys,

has anyone any idea how artillery cartridges where painted in WWI? Where they painted at all, or simply brass?

Cheers,
Ralf

Certainly the part of the shell ejected by the gun after firing appears to have been kept as brass in the vast majority of cases. I have come across some photos of German and French shells from a  museum. One of the German shells is a gas shell painted green apart from the brass nose cone and the brass rings at the base. It is a lightish green with two white rings painted around it just below the nose cone and in the centre a large white letter C. A German  shrapnel shell has the usual brass base but the business end is painted black. A German 32cm shell is painted yellow apart from the very tip of the nose (dull steel) and three brass rings near the base. Four French 75mm shells have brass bases, but the tops are  respectively black, yellow but with a thick dark green ring above the brass, black again, and finally ruby red (shiny like a thermos flask). Excuse the Oxford comma - just trying to p**s off Therese Coffey in case she reads this.

This is certainly an interesting topic and worth exploring with some of the WWI heavy guns coming with shell stacks included. If you want to show ejected shell cases around the gun then you are pretty safe to go with plain brass.

In all cases the part of the shell which travels towards the enemy is steel, so even if you don't show an unfired shell with paint added, you are still going to have to paint it two colours - brass and steel.

Thanks very much so far! Yes, its mostly about stacks of shells for heavy artillery - I know, ist usually of-board in Spearhead, but I found some nice specimens at Shapeways in addiiton to baccus and like to build some bases around them.

So it may be sufficient to paint the bases brass, the top steel und everything between in different shades of green. Or I will go crazy in finding out the correct colour for every nation and caliber...

FWIIW, I use brass for the part that is ejected and black for the projectiles. Although Great War Spearhead tables do not normally feature heavy and super-heavy artillery, I love having the models sitting along the edge of the table. They are 'wheel to wheel', just as my Grandfather described when he walked past the gun lines at Messines during WW1.

Robert

My big guns are also a tribute to my grandfather who was a regular in the Royal Garrison artillery. They certainly provided the 60pdr guns for the BEF in 1914.

This is a guide to British shell markings

https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/184729-british-18-pounder-case-paint-markings/

Thanks, that is way more colourful than I ever thought.

As my interest is mainly in the late summer/autumn campaigning of 1914 I wonder if shells were painted at all at that time or if this was something that became common as the war progressed with more ammunition about and many more personnel working on the artillery.

I haven't actually looked through this yet, but it may be of some use

http://gigconceptsinc.com/files/British_Treatise_on_Ammunition-1915.pdf

Thanks PT, but unfortunately there has just been local maintenance on the network here and this is taking an age to load, so will come back to it later.