Wayne rc

I have heard that the pre war panzer grey was darker, softskins usually had an eggshell almost satin finish. Dunkelgelb was very varied, from almost buff to yellow. As has been said weathering will obscure the actual shade anyway. I have heard that many pz grey vehicles were painted over with a mud slurry, esp in Africa.

Same as above as a template for hole spacing a piece of plasticard with two holes and a scriber to mark the positions. I punch out little discs to place at the legs where they are welded on. I did some on my 1/16 Pershing easier in that scale I admit.

I second the Cromwell Tamiya 1/35. Nice easy build one colour, and plenty of room to experiment with stowage etc. Also a saw a nice one, Acadamy late Hetzer 35th scale less than 20quid. The parts look good.

!Hi Shar, I see you come from an area I know well. I have family just down the road from you. Well all I can say is either you live in a mansion or your wife is very understanding, or maybe you are lucky enough to be young free and single lol. I must not grumble my wife is wonderful in many other ways and doesnt complain about my 1/35 collection, and she even let me put up a large corner shelf to house my Tamiya 1/32 Mustang I started my 5ft x 1.5ft dio before I met my other half, so I cant have it all. So Shar good luck with your dio, or maybe several dioramas.

I always wanted to do a load of Panthers on flatcars, I made a start and made a shelf and dio base with about 1.5 metres of track and ballast. I made a Dragon SSys 50t flatcar fully painted with markings, I tried to find another 2 but they went out of production, this was back in 1999. I bought another 2 of the Azimuth version and Dragons 30t flatcar that has armour wagon sides that are removable, it was my plan to mount a flak gun or Wirblewind on this. They are built to a good standard but not painted. The base with track is decaying in my Mums back garden, as my wife has a problem with my panzerzug idea If anyone is interested I am looking to get rid of them because they are just sitting in boxes taking up space. I just wish I had a bigger house. I cant blame my wife for not wanting this panzer train lol, I lucky that she puts up with my other kits

Thanks Alan, I agree Tamiya are overpriced and Dragon get most of my pocket money these days. The Academy kit looks good and yes late war is my thing mostly. I find it interesting because there is a lack of info compared with the early period. And thanks for the Russian Ferdinand site, very good pics.

Amazing stuff, Is it a brand new build or a cut and shut,using old hulks. The Russians did a Kursk movie back in the 50's you may notice clips in among real footage on some crap history channel docs. They are quite good replicas for the time, if you see these Tigers among real footage you will notice the turret roof has a much steeper angle, I think they were built on T55 In the Russian imagination the Kursk battle consisted of waves of hundred upon hundreds of Tigers being halted by the heroic Russian tankers in their much smaller T34s. The Russian at this time called all of the bigger German tanks inc Panthers Tigers. This leads to their claim that they knocked out hundreds of Tigers. In reality the Germans only lost a handful, but when you take the Panther and Ferdinand losses into account it is not so much of an exageration. Besides it was a titanic struggle, the Germans were far from beaten, and still not that far from Moscow, for the Russians it was so much more of a desperate situation than the Battle of Britain or the Bulge. So yes they are still reflecting on this period with huge national pride. One way of showing how heroic your people were is to portray your enemy as formidable. I remember the old British post war propaganda that portrayed the Germans as incompetant fools. The effect that had on me was to think that we must have been pretty hopeless if it took 6 years to beat them along with the huge allied numerical superiority. The Russians were glad to assist in the making of Downfall, so maybe we can hope that these two once bitter enemies can work together and tell the story of Kursk. I get very fed up with only the US hollywood version of things in the mainstream.

You have made a very good point Alan, I have been into German armour since 1970, and every few years there is a new wave of thought on the subject. Up until the late 80s I went with the idea that post 43 most panzers were leaving the factory in dk yellow and had the camo applied by the unit. I noticed that the schemes were mostly soft edge and I tried to achieve this with brush until I could afford an airbrush. At that time is was current thinking that some vehicles were back to pz grey in 1945. These ideas were perpetuated by colour plates in books by sqn signal etc. It was only when my reference library grew did I start to notice hardedge and other factory camo schemes. There are so many books and so much more detailed research available now, but I refuse to take anything as gospel. As you said earlier Alan, its a hobby and there is very little point in getting too stressed about whether your Das Reich Tiger is 100% accurate or not. I enjoy doing a little research, but then Im happy to make a model that seems to me to be typical, probable, or possible. Often with a little artistic licence thrown in, eg the Hetzers in your very nice pic, as you said have had time and trouble with the paintwork, I noticed some have been painted and minus the main armament, Based on your pic I may make a Hetzer with the full Czech paintjob, and leave the gun and mantlet etc in another colour, ie dk yellow, or one of the primer colours. And in my mind it would be one of the last ones sent out before the factory was overrun.

Hi Andy no offence taken. I dont think Alanmac was saying that paint shortages had no effect, that pic of the Hetzers shows a standard factory scheme being used at that period and AFAIK used pre war Czech paint, I mentioned this in an earlier post in this thread, this camo is what I and many other panzer modellers believe it to be, ie Czech paint. This is even more evidence of paint shortages. Shortages of official panzer paints have been mentioned by many respected authors and researchers. Orders were given to be sparing in applying camo, and as you can imagine confusion and misunderstandings led to much variation, there is much debate about the use of primer. Some believe that when the orders went out to stop base coating panzers dk yellow in mid/late 44 (it was ordered that camo paint to be done at the factory directly on to the red primer) that some tanks were sent out with green and yellow and red primer, eg it is possible that some Tiger II with the ambush camo had primer as a third colour instead of the official red brown. It seems that some of these KT had a buff mushroom? paint instead of dk yellow. Hetzer built in late 44 ambush may have had the buff colour, the Czech paint in the may 45 pic is also a buff type paint.

Hi Andy, I think you misunderstood me, you quoted me in part and then went on to make the point that I had already made. I said that there was at least 3 shades of dk yellow, and I didnt bother to mention fading or scale as I assume that most modellers are aware of these factors. I know the mushroom colour you refer to and that is not included in the 3 or so dk yellow varieties I mentioned,these had a definate yellow hue and even a slight green tint. So Andy I have already said it. It is up to the individual and what pleases them. And NOT to get anal about it because when you take all the factors, ie changing specs,shortages, duff paint,(yes paint firms do turn out dodgy batches) also substitution like buff and mushroom. There was so much variation that almost anything within reason is possible. Even the people who were there could not tell you the WHOLE story To sum it up I will repeat myself and say I all for people doing what please them, and or a bit of creative speculation based on a little or as much research as they want. As for well documented panzers you still could never a 100% accurate model, there is always a pic or two that you would need, and with B&W it is still down to supposition and speculation.

Hi Alan mac, thanks for the link. I dig what you are saying, to build a model is a choice between h historical accuracy and or your own satisfaction and not worry about exact shades and the rivet counters. I like to model some tanks after research and attempt to get the turret number style and camo etc as accurate as evidence allows, ie I built a Tiger II from Peipers KG and used every available pic to get the ambush camo looking correctish. But I always use a turret number that doesnt appear in published pics. On the other hand I do models based on the sort of speculation that I have expressed here in this thread. I join this thread to answer the question is a grey brumbar possible. And I with the best of my knowledge have answered yes. Im a a firm believer in models built in the spirit of creative and or educated speculation. I have found that armour modelling esp German, suffers from people being too pedantic or dogmatic. And then every few years the dogma changes when someone digs up a pic or two and then a bunch of people run with that ball. Does anyone on here know that were at least three different shades of the generic German dk yellow or gelbocker.not inc the various shades meant for tropical ie DAK use. Does it really matter, of course not. If your effort of a model pleases you. Then it is correct as it needs to be. I have had people say that they like my version of German dk yellow and ask how I get it like I have some secret knowledge. But to be honest I have no exact mix ratio, Ive seen original kit and it varies so I dont get too anal about it. As long as it is a hobby that we enjoy. Do what you want.

Very interesting Andy, sounds like that photo may support my speculation of a battered brumbar with alot of its zimmerit missing, having an overhaul and a random paint job before return to service. somebody mentioned grey primer, the evidence I have seen for this is a colour pic of a Jagdpanther with an MNH diagonal stripe factory camo that seems to show light grey stripes showing between the brown green and yellow, this suggests that as little paint as possible was used. There are also colous pics of the DB factory after capture with light grey panther hulls on show with what seems to be RAL 6003 (green) wheels. In Nov 44 armour and other component firms were ordered to base coat in 6003 olive green, I doubt that this was always possible, so we could have a panzer with three, ie green grey and red primers. It is very likely that a new panzer in march/april 45 could have had green wheels, grey hull and a red primer turret, and maybe a dk yellow or pz grey gun barrel. And then a sparing use of dk yellow and green in an attempt to be ecomical with the camo. The point Im making is that if this is the case with new vehicles late war, then God(or a very elderly German) would be able to say what would be possible with older rebuilds etc.

As has been pointed out, many vehicles from training units etc, were pressed into service and many older tanks were in service in the final weeks. IIRC there was a unit of Ferdinands or Elefants south of Berlin, cant remember the units name, but I believe it had about a dozen. I would be interested if someone could shed some light. I was led to believe that some 90 ferdinands were built and that most were committed to the Kursk battle in two independant battalions. It was always said that after heavy losses that survivors were retrofitted with an mg and sent to Italy. How many lost at Kursk? and how many sent to Italy. Im sure that some were still in Russia in 44. Where did the dozen or so Berlin unit Ferdinands come from? After all there was only about 90 built and that was back in 42/43.

A b&w photo wouldnt show much, the kirov tank plant at Leningrad was evacuated before the seige and became a repair centre. To make a model of a Stalingrad built T34 that was made during the fighting, you would need the model 41 turret with the STZ mantlet, a lot of STZ T 34 had applique armour on glacis and turret. Dont count pictures with the 2 hatch hex mod 42 ie micky maus, these were not built at STZ I imagine that unpainted they would appear a deep rust brown with metal coloured welds standing out quite brightly

Ok ha ha, got the point, but there has been talk or rumour of late use of earlier paints ie pz grau and feld grau, Re built tanks would have been less regulation than new production, down in Czech land ie skoda and tatra, it seems that prewar czech paints were used when RAL stocks ran out. MAN MNH DB Vomag Henschel etc were ordered to apply paint saving camo at the factory late 44 onward, other firms would have probably had less new paints. Heavy weapons flak etc was being painted pz gray. And there are photos of these

As has been mentioned the Tamiya Brummbar is a 1943 production, you could try a heavy overspray of dk green and brown, some vehicles in the unit applied camo perio were painted in a way that hardly any dk yellow. Or imagine an old veteran brummbar, being returned to service after being rebuilt with heavy damage to its original zimmerit and in early 1945 with the war now on German soil and the Brummbar being an urban vehicle an overspray of pz grey with old camo showing through, paint shortages etc. Well who could disprove such an approach, just because there may be no photos doesnt mean it didnt happen.

As far as I know only DD Shermans were actually used on the assault phase of D Day, and armour was brought in by LST etc to beef up the beachead, LCM were used to bring fuel and ammo after the assault phase. If you look at some pictures of the beacheads post assault, Im sure you will get some ideas, ie a Sherman that has been landed by ship(off diorama) on a makeshift road thru a gap in cleared obstacles, and an LCM either landing ammo etc or evacuating wounded. This could be very shortly after the assault, remember it is essential to beef up and supply any gain or foothold when assaulting a beach or a river this would be done asa

That sounds ok, the green centre for 1 kp, As far as remember it was one of the camo colours I may have been wrong to say dk yellow. Also each kp had its own way of placing the cross keys 1st SS Pz Korps insignia, one of the kompanies, I cant remember which one, applied it on an area where the zimmerit was cut away especially. Yes I agree that most 'field camo' was applied by field workshops but often spare tracks tools ropes etc were overpainted, I have definate evidence, but a very particular nco or officer may have ordered tools to be removed. A lot of trouble for nothing when there was always more important maintainance issues to deal with. Black finish on shovels yes I agree like hammerite.

I agree with Andy on the graphite, you can buff it and it will shine like polished steel. I disagree with painting the tools dunklegelb but in the pre factory scheme period ie feb 43 to sept 44 the green and brown that was applied at unit level would have been sprayed over everything inc tow ropes, When the tanks were painted in the factory with 2 or 3 colour camo again the tools and cables should be in the natural state, fire extinguiser jack were painted dark yellow by thier factories anyway, as were tow hooks. Wooden items ie jack block should be natural wood I believe. Some modellers inc myself will try a few what ifs. Im building a late panther G its going to have a dark green base coat but to break up the green which is going to have the MNH diagonal stripe camo, I will assume that the jack and fire exting, would have been made earlier and be painted in the dark yellow.

I agree for scale effect esp, lighten the colours, and yes the field applied camo varied greatly, because as said dilution etc. But the Panther G in question was made during the period where panzers were painted at the factory the Tamiya instructions for 301 are quite good and represent a MAN factory pattern from about oct nov 44. I agree with the point that Dragon put a mix of parts of different versions in the same box but then its up to the modeller to make the most of it with a little research. Its up to the individual. Some may be happy to put whichever parts that look cool, Im not going to knock somebody for not being as crazy as me.

Yes they were the best thing when they came out but there are a few issues. To most eyes they do build into what most people would accept as a Panther but dig a little deeper and the idler is wrong, I dont like the wheels and the skirt hooks, with a little extra work and maybe some etch you have an ok Panther. But why bother unless you can get a Tamiya G for peanuts the Dragon late G and steel wheel G are very good and have the benefit of being two decades younger, so Im not knocking Tamiya because thier G's when they came out in the early 90's were the state of the art back then and I was over the moon to see them at the time. However Dragons Panthers (recent)are the best and anyone who wants to build an accurate one, get Dragon no I dont get paid for saying this. Wish I did. :-)

The Tamiya Panthers are easy builds but inaccurate,and only have rubber band tracks. The Dragon kits are far superior. The premium ed Ausf D and A have etch and great accurate tracks with hollow guide horns.....the steel wheel and late G smart kits have the same track and minimum etch. If you are not bothered with etch the smart kit is good OOTB. And with added etch, amazing....a little Panther knowledge and some minor tweaks....you get what you pay for and IMO. The Tamiya 1990s G's are way behind....Some of you may have noticed that Im a bit of a Panther nut. Any questions just ask....Regards Wayne

I once was checking the accuracy of some 1/35 drawings against actual measurments taken from an Afv and came to the conclusion that Tamiya had chosen 1/35 because it gives the designers a little leeway in the maths, Tamiya seem to round up or down to the nearest mil for the main dimentions, and the nearest 0.5 for smaller bits like wheels and so on, Tamiya claim to Tweek the actual dimentions here and there, thus compromising 100% accuracy but aiming to capture the look of the original. I read that in some Tamiya promo...... And it seemed to make sense when I was playing with maths and scale drawings etc....eg doing sums for a 1/24 Panther using 1/35 plans...... Ive been happy to model in 35 for many years, when I first got into Tamiya back in 1971 it was an exciting time for Armour kits, the small range soon expanded and improved, and a few other Japanese firms made some 1/35. Anyone remember Nitto and Nichimo ?....... Italeri came along and some of thier efforts knocked Tamiya for six......but the competition has been good for the rising quality and customer choice...... Im sure that Tamiya have a place in many of our hearts, and even though in my area of interest (German) Dragon have surpassed them, Tamiya still remains the most builder friendly and it is always a pleasure to open the box....... Yes a big thanks to Tamiya for the odd 35th scale.... Monogram had some nice armour in 32nd along with a few from Airfix, and its maybe a shame that Tamiya chose not to go with the 32. But then again we may not have what we have today..... Along with Tamiya and 1/35 we also had Bandai and a good range of 1/48 armour, this scale now making a comeback, but why did Bandai go for 1/24 and 1/15 for a few large kits, and Tamiya 1/25 and 1/16 for thier big tanks. Ps I said earlier that its always a pleasure to open the Tamiya box, esp the 1/32 P 51, but its about time they got rid of items like the old I mean ancient Panther Ausf A and a few others...... I think its a little misleading to newbies and younger modellers, for example. You get a nice 1/35 Tamiya Cromwell or Stug III, and then find out the hard way why the Panther A seemed such a bargain at the time, Come on Tamiya its crap, on the other hand some of the old Tamiya are still good esp for the newbie, but this should be reflected in the price, I don't like it when Tamiya do a re pop and the price is almost that of the more recent kits