Retired Bob

I was just quoting my Chief when we were refitting bomb beams into a Canberra bomb bay. (Without the 'golly-goshing' expletives of course)

The usual phrase from the 'supervisor' would be to the guy with the hammer, "Go on hit it, don't tickle it" I agree, thin sprayed patterns with some counter shading over the zimmerit. Someone had a Picasso moment by the look of it.

LUDDITE One word and I got it wrong. I'd have Googled it if I wasn't such a Luddite

The photo of the JagdTiger with the Porsche suspension and the strange camouflage that I posted earlier, I found this photo of the same vehicle taken from the front, there are German crewmen working so it's a wartime photo.

I've checked my Academy King Tiger kit, It's labelled as a last production type and has the raised ribs on the front mudguards, the 18 teeth sprockets with the narrow transport tracks, other than those it's a standard post zimmerit built KT with few optional parts. As mentioned earlier the decals have some neatly painted green circles for the octopus scheme, and there area couple of figures included.

I first saw pictures of this aircraft in a 1973 Phantom magazine, the photos were taken at an air show in October 1972. I thought it looked really good in this colour and would like to make a model of it. I didn't know at that time, that before the 70s were through I would be a weapons mechanic working on RAF Phantoms. Since then I've been interested in all versions of the Phantom and have quite a few kits and lots of aftermarket parts to make them as accurate as possible. I'm not sure how many of these red QF-4B drones there were, as there are various detail differences between them, and this is the one I will build, 148365, #40. Most F-4Bs were upgraded in the late 60s, they received slotted stabs, up-graded main wheel legs so there was a bump on the upper wing surface, ECM gear, secure voice comms and Mk.7 zero-zero ejection seats. The only upgrade that I can see on this airframe is that it has the Mk.7 ejection seats. To build it I have some Academy and Tamiya 1/48th scale kits that I can use, Eduard 3D printed ejection seats, both the Mk.5 and Mk.7 seats look really good and are designed to fit the Tamiya kit, their fin caps come in a pair, clean with no bumps and with just the rear RWR bump. I hope your build goes without any problems.

Paul, I've had a look at my Dragon kit, most of the turret parts are on sprue O, the rain shield over the gun sight is moulded on the turret front panel, part O 25, for pre-1945 versions this is to be removed but photos show they were fitted to some KT's used in the Ardennes offensive. The cupola is part O 14 while the m/g ring is part N 21. Are these parts in your kit?

I should have got my big book on the KT out, I use this for all my details, not sure how accurate some of the profiles are but it's a great reference source, printed in 2007. It specifies that from November 20th 1944 that dark green RAL 6003 should be used as a primer with red-brown RAL 8017 and dark yellow RAL 7028 used as camouflage colours. It adds this note: "Dark yellow RAL 7028 was not to be used as a primer for vehicles intended for rail transportation on uncovered flatcars" There was this warning though, "The shortage of any camouflage paint was not to delay the delivery of any vehicles to combat units" So it looks like we all need to get some RAL 6003.

I'll have to get mine out as well, phnarr! All I can recall of the Academy KT is the octopus rings on the decal sheet were far too neat. All it says on the tin is green primer.

Lovely build of a cumbersome, slow, unpopular aircraft. Looks great to me, but please, add some dirt to those very neat tyres.

If it's Dragon plastic it should have the rain shield over the gun sight moulded onto the turret front plate, the plans indicate to remove it for earlier versions. There is also a separate rain guard on the sprues on some kits, I'll check my late production kit for a sprue letter and part number, same for the m/g ring on the cupola.

This photo and the colourised version show a JagdTiger near Paderborn, Germany in April 1945. It is believed to be one of seven JTs of 3 Kompanie s.Pz.Jg.Abt.512 that were trying to get to the Harz mountains to continue fighting the allies. It suffered a mechanical problem, when it could not be recovered the crew destroyed it by setting off the demolition charges.

I found these old photos on Flickr, they were taken post war by T/Sgt William Haynes, After he passed away they were found and put on-line. Quality isn't great but the subject matter is. A photo from the front. This JagdTiger has the Porsche suspension, not sure if it has a weird camo scheme or some post-war graffiti has been added. Internal explosion has blown the gun mantlet off the barrel. This last one shows the welding of the front glacis plate and m/g cover, 9 toothed sprocket means it had Henschel suspension. R.I.P. William

here is the colour photo of the "octopus" camouflaged KT, I'm not sure where the red primer story came from as the main colour is green primer. Correct about the transport tracks but they were the usual track fitted to get them out of the factory and to the front line, just in this case, the factory was near the front line. It has the late type front mudguards, rain shield over the gun sight aperture but it still has the mounting rail for the cupola machine gun, this was being replaced by just a mounting post on late turrets. The reversed white swastika was added post war. Good luck with your build.

The photo appears to have been taken some time ago since the chase plane is a F-8 Crusader. I am also planning on building a QF-4B, I have either an Academy or Tamiya F-4B kit to use, the Caracal decals and various AM parts to get the details correct. To change the Tamiya fin cap so it's like the photo you can cut and sand the front ECM bump off, or if you prefer to get a resin one I recommend the Eduard 3D printed one, some other products do not fit as well. Some reference photos that I've seen from the 70s show an early airframe without slotted stabs. no bump over the main wheel legs but they did show Mk.7 ejector seats, usually these early airframes would have Mk.5 seats fitted. This is the first time I've seen one without any ejection seats, perhaps it was on a "final flight" so they had been removed. The F-4D type IR radome bump is also new to me.

Totally agree, they could have been as formidable as as they looked if they had experienced and well trained crews. Lucky for the allies they didn't.

A nice looking kit, I always liked the early versions of the Tiger, does it include the barbed wire to keep the Soviet tank killer teams from climbing on the tank?

This will be an interesting build, the Dragon kits are very detailed and have several options so as Stef mentioned, you'll have lots of parts to go in the spares box.

I have not seen this kit before, I thought it may have been the Dragon kit but the box says it's Takom. When Dragon initially released their sPzr.Abt.505 KT you had to add your own zimmerit, they later re-released it using their moulded on zimmerit kit, it will be interesting to see this kit being built.

From the Tank Museum at Bovington, the JagdTiger with Porsche suspension, it still has some zimmerit remaining. This is the JagdTiger with Henschel suspension, this one is a one of the last few that were built in April 1945 with extra spare track hooks on the sides. Kubinka Museum, Russia.

A good choice and welcome to the Group Build, I have the Dragon version of this Tiger with the name "Tiki" at least there is no zimmerit involved.

I take it you are not going to get a bunch of them then?

They are very nicely printed and as it says on the box they need no clean up, just push the pins in and job done. If it wasn't for the cost I would use them on all my builds.

Glad to hear it was good news Bill. Hope it continues. Bob

I bought this kit of the Porsche suspensioned JagdTiger (Hunting Tiger) in 2009. The model is a version of the JagdTiger that was an attempt to make a simpler and cheaper version of this huge tank killing machine (78 tons) that was armed with a 12.8cm PaK 44 gun. This suspension system used eight pivoting rocking arm suspension units attached to the sides of the hull, much like the system utilised on the Ferdinand/Elephant tank hunters. There were problems with the system handling the weight off road and, during tight turning manoeuvres the suspension units were liable to break off. In the end, the tank hunter variant was made using the same internal, torsion bar suspension system as the King Tiger, this version was popularly known as the Henschel variant. The number of JagdTigers built with the Porsche suspension system was quite low, depending on the reference material, different numbers are given, the book that I have (Ryton Publications) cites only 4 were built using the Porsche system (Wikipedia cites 11) and 77 with the Henschel suspension system. Most of these Porsche type JagdTigers were built when zimmerit anti-magnetic mine coating was being applied so I obtained a set of Atak zimmerit to add to my kit, most photos only show this version in training units painted in overall grey, however, there is one photo showing a camouflaged, non-zimmerit covered JagdTiger so that's how I will build my kit. The kit contents are still bagged up, the 6 sprues of tracks would be hard work to clean up and assemble so I have got a set of T-Rex 3D printed tracks to replace them with. There is a small fret of p/e for tool clamps and an aluminium turned barrel. I've assembled a short length of track to ensure it fits the drive sprockets. Having 5 parts to each paired link it's a slow, fiddley assembly but it looks a lot better than the kit parts. Everything is all ready for the start of the STGB, roll on the 30th of March. Any questions or comments are always welcome.