Desert paint

[Parsley]

Hi my 1985 mt500 Has desert paint underneath the green. Was that standard? I mean could it of seen action?

[Wirralman]

MT500 were built ex factory in four colours from memory green ( standard)
Red
White
? You will be able to find out with a little forum search

Northern Ireland bikes weren't green as it was deemed too military looking
Riding Instructors had a different colour so they could be easily picked out
The Sheffield Parks CV 500 white with black forks ?

Vehicles can be painted in theatre to suit conditions, so desert sand was used .

Motorbikes are not generally used in front like combat roles (Special forces may use bikes in forward areas but they choose their own kit so the use of an MT highly unlikely)

So bikes don't normally see action , whilst MTs may have a gun box, you would only use it as a last resort

I used to train for forward recce , using hard skin armoured cars, main armament 76mm and Browning machine guns. The name of the game was to see but not be seen, as soon as you're seen you're dead ( A Buccaneer attacked me once approaching from behind in a valley coming up flying over my head covering me in jet fumes- he proved the point) . If you were on a bike with zero protection , you'd be dead meat.

That said if you operate in the snow, you paint vehicles white, in the desert - sand , woodland - green. And if you are in a forward area you MUST be in radio contact. Of the hundreds of MTs I've seen being sold off only 4 were FFR- fitted for radio- they were painted white and had military police markings

In short, you can tell the punters in the pub anything you like but you could easily be bubbled

[howatdon]

Hi, i tried to post and PM yesterday, seemingly failed.
I have a pic of an MT 500 in use during the Gulf war in 1991. The file is way too large to post, please PM with an e mail and I will send it over & happily let some other younger IT savvy member shrink/zip file/reduce size & post it for others interests.
cheers
Don

[hounddog]

Thank you. Pm sent

[hounddog]

IMG_1866be.JPG (31.24 KiB) Viewed 3131 times

Thank you Don , here is your picture

[FeldjaegerUK]

Love the photo, especially the 'combat bicycle' pulled up alongside! Ready to tackle full on assault of the chow tent, or blagging kit of the Yanks at the mandatory (well equipped!) in theatre PX!

[trickyh]

Hi my 1985 mt500 Has desert paint underneath the green. Was that standard? I mean could it of seen action?

If you have the mil number (eg 71 KG 31) then you can look up who it was stationed with via the Merlin Archive. For example my bike spent a few years with the Royal Artillery, then Royal Logistics Corp and finally TA before being sold off.

[MT500downunder]

That's a nice picture as there are not so many pics around. Unsure how many were sent into the gulf war, but i know of 6 and I have 2 of them. Sadly i scrapped one because the engine was stuffed, which was pretty stupid.

Mine is sandy brown, they went to a lot of trouble to paint the frame and the areas that could not be seen, but they did not remove all the wiring, splashed a lot of paint around.

Anyway, Mine is a 30 year rebuild and a labor of love and nearly finished, look forward to riding it before they issue me a zimmer frame.

[IvorD]

In my yoof, when I was out in Germany, I was sent up from where I was stationed in Detmold to 7th Armoured Brigade HQ, in Celle (home of the Desert Rats!) to paint a load of their vehicles back to the green and black paint scheme from the desert paint scheme while the troops were off home on leave after Op Granby. Along with about 4 or 5 other guys we painted Armstrongs, Landrovers, Bedford 4 tonners and a couple of AFV 436's.

My own Armstrong has a mix of Green, black, white, desert sand paint layers. When I tidied it up after buying it I left most of the layers of patch paint on it and just gave it a gentle rub down with some wet and dry before giving it a once over with some Land Rover Cotswold Green to preserve the history underneath. I took all the paint layers off the plastics though back to the base green as they looked terrible! However, don't be surprised to find layers of all sorts of paint colours on any military vehicle.

There used to be a thing for "civilianising" some vehicles for when used on adventure training especially if used in places like Bavaria or even Austria. Usually this involved taking a tin of Oxford Blue and brush painting the bodywork of the chosen vehicle (usually a landrover) and painting the wheels and wheel arches with gloss white in an attempt to fool people to think it was a bog stock civvy Defender County. Not many people were fooled, I think, as they still had the khaki green tilt on the back and a military number plate!