ICM Pz.Kpfw.VI Ausf.B King Tiger (late) with Full Interior (35364)

[Mike]

Pz.Kpfw.VI Ausf.B King Tiger (late) with Full Interior (35364)

1:35 ICM

 

 

The successor to the much vaunted Tiger heavy tank instilled more terror in the Allied forces due to initial encounters lending an almost invincible air to the design.  It was soon found that although it packed a formidable punch, and could absorb a lot of punishment, it was in fact a flawed design from an engineering point of view.  Stressing the transmission even further than the Tiger I, they suffered terrible attrition due to breakdowns, leading to many examples being captured or scuttled by their crew if these breakdowns occurred under fire.

 

When it worked, it was very difficult to kill, and could seriously outrange almost everything on the battlefield, but as with the Tiger I before it, the Allies worked out a strategy to take them out by cooperative attacks between multiple Allied tanks.  As well as the reliability issues that were never fully addressed due to the state of the war, the complexity of the design was such that they were never available in sufficient quantities to make a difference, and even when they were, Hitler's obsession with micro-managing every aspect of the war led to some poor placement of resources.

 

Many King Tigers were captured by the Allies and taken back for analysis, with a few remaining intact long enough to find their way into museums, such as the one at Bovington.  The Jagdtiger was a development of the King Tiger, using the chassis to mount an even more powerful gun in a casemate, but again very few of these saw action too late in the war.

 

 

The Kit

There has been a proliferation of Tigers and King Tigers of late, and this is ICM's take on this behemoth of WWII.  The tooling is all new, and it includes a complete interior, although in order to show off some of it, you would need to carry out some surgery to the upper deck and turret, and this kit would lend itself perfectly to a cut-away or even a destroyed tank diorama if you have the nerve to hack apart a perfectly good kit of course!  The box is of standard width and height, but has been extended by quite a margin to almost 54cm in order to fit all the plastic in.  There's your first clue – there's a lot in the box.  The instruction booklet is also on the weighty side, with plenty of pages to keep you going through those long winter nights.  Seriously though, there are said to be almost 720 parts in the box, and that's a statement I can well believe, as there are a full complement of shells for the ammo store, individual track links that are made from parts (like the real thing), loads of wheels to spread the 69 tonne load, and axles on which the wheels hang.  The box has thirteen sprues and three separate parts in a mid-grey styrene, four in black styrene for the tracks, a fret of copper-coloured Photo-Etch, a small decal sheet and of course the instruction booklet with the painting and markings guide at the rear in colour.  One of the separate parts is a replacement barrel for the one on the sprues, which is split all the way along the centreline.  The replacement has a complete barrel section, with only the sleeve and the flash hider split vertically with two additional parts needed to complete it.  This looks to have been decided late in the design process, but it's good to see them thinking of the modeller, although some will probably want to splash out on a turned metal barrel for the strength, additional detail and lack of seams.  Yes, I'm one of those ones – I can't help myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking over the sprues the detail is good throughout, although there are no boundaries being pushed in terms of tooling, as the main slabs of armour don't have any texturing to represent rolled steel of the era, but if you're adding Zimmerit, or have tried adding texture to your models before, you'll probably be unfazed by this, as it is surprisingly easy, so at least with a clean canvas you can go any way you choose in that area.   The interior is well-detailed, and careful thought has been given to the construction of the various areas so that it all fits together like a big, dangerous jigsaw.  The only omission here seems to be stencilling for the shells, and maybe a few more decals for the first aid box etc., and of course the cabling that is way too small to be realistically included on any kit if we're honest.

 

Construction begins with the turret basket, unusually.  The basket has a circular floor that is smaller than the aperture, and this is suspended from the turret ring by a framework onto which the gunner's seat is first added, then his controls, and a less salubrious bicycle-style seat is provided for the loader on what will be the other side of the breech.  This assembly is mated with the lower turret and ring early in the build, with the aft turret shell racks installed on a double-skin floor that has slots in one layer to locate the racking that the shells slot into, eleven per side.  The breech is next, with breech-block, shell ejection guide, the gun mounts and other equipment plastered all over it.  The basic breech is then fitted to the twin slots in the front of the turret floor, and the upper turret gets its mantlet and top strip glued in place before the two are mated, after adding the roof-mounted vision-block, which is moulded in grey styrene.  The three-part gun barrel is outfitted with the studded ring found at its base, and the two-part ring that sits behind it, protecting the gun and turret front from incoming rounds.  Once complete that just slots onto the breech, and can be left loose for painting, so you get paint right behind the shield.  Next are the commander's cupola and the gunner's hatch, the latter being well-detailed with hand-holds and latches, and the former having a hatch hinge-point fitted before installation.  Lifting lugs, mushroom vent, shell ejection hatch, periscope armour and the commander's life-swivel hatch are fitted, with the rear hatch that doubles as the exit route for the gun during maintenance built up with latches and handles, plus the armoured hinges and a representation of the early pistol port moulded in.  The delicate mount for the commander's machine gun is fitted to the top of his cupola, and the hooks for the spare track links are installed over small marks on the side of the turret, with the links being added from the standard links that are used to create the tracks.

 

Now for the hull.  There isn't a traditional "tub" for the hull, and you start by building up the sponsons with internal and external parts such as dampers, bases for shell stowage, brakes, final drive housing and the torsion bars for the suspension.  The hull floor is a sled to which the lowest parts are added before being partially covered by the torsion bars that extend across the hull floor.  The addition of the sponsons finishes off the lower tub,  and lays the ground work for the interior once the two perforated ribs are laid front to back on the floor around the torsion bars, and in the process creating support for the incoming equipment.  The engine is first to be built, sandwiched inside an armoured box with its auxiliaries, tanks and hosing.  It is added to the engine firewall bulkhead and installed in the rear of the hull with the driveshaft, turret take-off box and the final drive/transmission boxes.  Two plates are installed under the turret position, with another laid over it that has a cut-out for the turret basket, and further forward the driver's controls and seat are glued into the left of the transmission.  The radiator baths with their PE fans that are folded into shape using a pair of tweezers are made as a pair, fitting on each side of the engine, with more equipment being fitted inside the engine bay and on the crew-side of its bulkhead.  No space was wasted, and the remainder of the radiator bays are filled with fuel tanks on each side before attention turns to the road wheels.  Construction within the hull continues with adding stiffeners across the hull, and supports for the heavy armour along with additional equipment and a full complement of 88mm shells, plus their racks, which build up layer by layer to a total of 46 in the sponson racks.

 

 

The King Tiger was designed with overlapping pairs of road wheels, learning from the mistakes of the Tiger I which had interleaved wheels to spread the vehicle's weight, which could result in taking off up to 14 wheels if an inner one needed repair or maintenance.  The all-up weight increased substantially between the two vehicles, so there are a LOT of pairs of wheels on a Königstiger, with nine axles each side, plus the idler and drive sprockets, all of which are assembled from two parts each and fitted to their respective swing-arms.  These are capped off with hubs, and later in the build the tracks are wrapped around them.  ICM advise making up two runs for the top and bottom, leaving the counting of links up to you.  There are 19 links (comprising two parts) on the top run, and 20 on the lower run, with a further 3 wrapping around the rear and 4 on the front.  This is repeated for the opposite side, and you will need to arrange the tracks so that they conform to the shape of the track run, and give the correct (minimal) sag, which you can see in any period photo of a correctly adjusted set of tracks.

 

The upper hull is supplied as a traditional main part with a hole in the rear for the engine bay, turret aperture and the lift-out front section that encompasses the hull crew hatches.  The radiator vents are moulded-in, giving no opportunity to display a radiator bay without surgery to the hull, which is a minor negative IMHO.  Periscopes are slotted into the front of the hull, hatches are added to the front insert, mushroom vents to the engine insert, and the Kugelblende armoured blister surrounding the bow machinegun is backed with a box to receive the gun stub in preparation for installation, with a small forest of lifting lugs littering the engine deck and lift-out hatches.  Armoured covers are fitted to the periscopes and the vents on the engine deck, which leaves it ready for adding to the lower hull in advance of adding all the various smaller parts such as track and pioneer tools, mudguards, armoured exhausts, towing cables, shackles and the PE grilles covering the intakes and vents on the engine deck.  The turret secures with a bayonet fitting, and an aerial is glued into a socket on the engine deck, completing the build phase.

 

Markings

There are four decal options included in the box, with enough variation in finish from white distemper through Dunkelgelb to two Ambush schemes, that will please most folks without resorting to aftermarket decals.  From the box you can build one of the following:

 

• Pz.Kpfw.VI Ausf.B, s.Pz.Abt. 509 Feldherrnhalle, Hungary, March 1945
• Pz.Kpfw.VI Ausf.B, s.Pz.Abt. 503, Danzig, March 1945
• Pz.Kpfw.VI Ausf.B, s.Pz.Abt. 501, Ardennes, December 1944
• Pz.Kpfw.VI Ausf.B, Stab/s.Pz.Abt. 501, Ardennes, December 1944

 

 

 

This is an AFV, so the decal sheet is modest in size, with only a few markings on the sheet.  The registration is perfect on my sample, as is the colour density and sharpness, but I would have liked to have seen some decals for the shell stencilss, and perhaps some for the stencils that are found inside almost any AFV.

 

 

Conclusion

This model gives you the basis for a good King Tiger build, and although it lacks some of the modern frippery such as rolled steel texture to the armour and a complete interior, there is enough there to give the viewer the impression of how crowded and claustrophobic these vehicles were for their crew.  If you want to leave some hatches open on your finished model, as long as you've painted the innards, it will give a convincing sense of a working vehicle.

 

Highly recommended.

 

Review sample courtesy of