Dragon Tiger 1 Ausf E Late Production W Zimmerit Unboxing

That old little thing that makes the money for our hobby once again gets in the way of our hobby, still here's the second installment of my Easter build, the Dragon 6383 Tiger I.

I found this unboxing on YouTube and it says it all, so why bother and doing it yourself (badly) when you can steal it with pride. Still all the credits go to Leon Fray, thanks Leon for a great job, another couple of days I can spend glueing and painting.

 

Some close ups of the beautifully sculpted zimmerit on the model, can't find any fault in it, but I'm sure some will. ;)

 



 

The gun mantlet

 

 

left side of the turret

 

 

WIP

 

 

The last picture is proof that some actual work is being done, I just have a slight problem with my lighting, something I'm hoping to solve this weekend, stay tuned for more in the near future.

 

Ohh and yes I have been good and haven't started on the new Hobby Boss boxes, thought the manuals have been studied in depth.

 

Birthday present

My birthday present from Sockelshop arrived and I'm one happy camper with a nice heap of new things.

Going to check out Hobby Boss as you can see, the opinions on the net are pretty good so I'll see for myself how the quality is.

You might notice the two Tiger (P)'s, I got both because; at just over 25 euro's they are dirt cheap, come with a complete turret interior and it will be a fun project building them next to each other.
The Pak on the Pz. Kpfw 35 R, just caught my eye on one of the many build blogs, once again a full interior on this one so I just had to add it to the stack.

The big stack in the middle are oils by 502 Abteilung, lets hope these will give me better results as the cheap stuff from the discount stores, I'll keep you posted.

The Fruil tracks are for my Academy priest which came with horrible rubber tracks, which really don't do in my book.

The panzer putty will find it's way onto a few late war German tanks with hard edged camo, I tried the cheap discount store magic sculpt, which worked perfectly untill I tried to remove it, lets say I got a tank with pink camo. ;)

From Griffon I got a bending tool for working PE hinges, amazingly cheap considering the price we pay for most of our tool, I also got fenders for my SturmTiger project.

Next to some scale maps, to complete the look of the many artilery models I have, I bought the AK interactive Realistic Wood Effect book, hopefully something I'll be able to use for some future projects.

So happy birthday to me... *big big smile*

Work on the Tiger progressed during the past couple days and I'll be posting the results sofar in the coming days.

Dragon 6383 Tiger I Late Production

Well things at times go differently then how you plan them, but i just can't resist a Tiger that's on sale, so the Wirbelwind went back into the stack and my easter project went up from a panzer IV to a panzer VI. This is the beasty,

the PanzerKraftWagen VI Ausfuhrung E aka the feared Tiger I, by Dragon.
It's the late production with Zimmerit, box number 6383.

Dragon 6540 Flakpanzer IV "Wirbelwind"

Ok, time to restart this little effort after a long long break, I have been modeling and taking pictures, but the blogging part just didn't happen.

For the restart I selected the Dragon kit #6540 from my stack, one of the many versions of the German WWII workhorse the Panzer IV.

A little bit of history on this one from wiki.

The Flakpanzer IV "Wirbelwind" (Whirlwind in English) was a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun based on the Panzer IV tank. It was developed in 1944 as a successor to the earlier self-propelled anti-aircraft gun Möbelwagen. In the first years of the war, the Wehrmacht had less interest in developing self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, but as the Allies began to gain air superiority, the need for more mobile and better-armed self-propelled anti-aircraft guns increased. During the early summer of 1944, SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Wilhelm Krause with the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend came up with the concept of the Flakpanzer IV Wirbelwind.[1] He presented the concept to SS-Obersturmbannführer Max Wünsche, commanding officer of the 12th SS Panzer Regiment and it was approved by Hitler. The Panzer IV's turret was removed and replaced with an open-top, nine-sided turret which housed a quadruple 2 cm Flakvierling 38 L/112.5. A closed-top design would have been preferable, but this was not possible due to the heavy smoke generated by the four anti-aircraft guns. Production of the tank was carried out by Ostbau Werke in Sagan, Silesia. Thereafter, the 2 cm shells proved less effective against aircraft so a more powerful successor was produced which eventually replaced it. Known as the Flakpanzer IV Ostwind (East Wind), the successor was equipped with a single 3.7 cm FlaK 43. The combination of armor and rapid fire from the four guns of the Wirbelwind did make it effective against ground targets. Between 87 and 105 Wirbelwinds were produced during the war, but due to discrepancies between the recorded production numbers at the Ostbau Works and Wehrmacht service records, the exact number will probably never be known.

Sd. Kfz. 179 Bergepanther

Ok, first one.

I haven't build a model in a while, but the bug caught me again and i'll try and write about my progress on a regual bases.

For my first project i have chosen the Italeri box no. 6472 the German Sd. Kfz. 179 aka. Bergepanther.

The contents of the box looks good, there is one photo etched sheet with the MG shield and grills for the engine deck.

The tracks are the usual rubber kind, they look good at first glance, though strangely there are 4 tracks, meaning you'll get 4 connections, and those usually don't look great.

My knife itches... but first...

A bit of history on the Bergepanzer, got this from the net hope no one minds the copy:

On March 29th of 1943, it was decided to produce recovery version of Panther for use in the Panzer-Abteilungen. In June of 1943, MAN produced original 12 prototype series Bergepanthers which were turretless and modified Ausf Ds returned for repairs. Production started in July of 1943 and Panther Ausf A and later Ausf G were used, although production was slow and various modifications were made during the production. Early Bergepanther was armed with 20mm KwK 38 L/55 and later on with twin 7.92mm MG34 or MG42s. Bergepanther was operated by the crew made up of commander, driver and mechanic. It was fitted with a 1.5 ton lifting crane and other recovery/repair equipment (eg. large spade, 40 ton winch etc.), some of it especially designed. Overall, only 347 (240 Ausf A and 107 Ausf G) along with 12 based on Ausf D were produced from June of 1943 to March of 1945. Bergepanthers were produced by Demag(Benrath), Henschel and MAN. Bergepanthers equipped Panther-Abteilungens (starting in August of 1943), schwere Panzer(Tiger)-Abteilungens and schwere Panzer-Jager-Abteilungens (starting in January of 1944) along with some independent recovery and repair units. Some Bergepanthers had their recovery equipment removed and were modified to carry ammunition, designated as Munitionspanzer Panther. Bergepanther was the best recovery vehicle of World War II and after the war, some captured Bergepanthers were used by the French Army until mid 1950s.

Model Panzer

Well not sure if anyone will have any intrest in the little models i build but lets just call this therapy and a good place to put my pictures and thoughts.

And if someone happens to stumble over my little corner of cyber space i hope they will enjoy their stay here.

So here goes, lets see if we can get this little puppy flying.