I’m so sorry Brian, in my last post I got confused who I was replying to, it’s now corrected. Stay with us, I appreciate your input & we’re all looking at the same clues.

Thanks again HP – so these are very relevant photos. If only that 2nd image had been cropped a centimetre further right we’d see the plate. Mercedes’ own records say “Heydrich’s” 320 was one of around 30 customised “Mannheim” versions (i.e. pimped/bigger engine) and that he personally took delivery & drove it to Prague. I’ve taken some time to compare the above 320 with the recon photos & while I can’t be positive it’s the same car I can’t spot any obvious differences either. The rectangular frames on the front screens are presumably heating elements (it’s winter-time & the other limos have them too) so presumably they were removable for warmer weather. I don’t think there’s any evidence there were two Mannheim’s in Prague so maybe it is THE car…all the more galling that photo was cropped.

The Macdonald book has 2 images of Frau H – she had a high forehead with blondish hair pulled tight back so nearside lady no, t’other one…maybe but I don’t think so. What’s with the funny hats? I’m more interested if that’s Klein at the wheel – but likely he was driving one of the big limos in front I guess.
(Off to Canberra, back online Friday)

Tim,

No problem; keep up the good work - this project is unearthing all sorts of interesting stuff!

The females' hats? Well, that's fashion for you I suppose. It may not be inconceivable that one or both of the ladies could be secretarial staff? Unlikely but senior officers like Heydrich would have had a PA or two I would have thought. By extension, he might have been a caring employer and given his staff a bit of a break and a day out?

Anyway, this does nothing to help the research; keep it up Tim, looking forward to the next phase - and whatever amazing photos Frenchy uncovers.

Brian

Thanks Brian, re the ladies – remember Allo Allo from the ‘80s & how Herr Flic’s PA Helga tended to be in uniform…or more often lingerie…those were the days. They might be wives of Czech ministers of the puppet government given the occasion, or one might even be Frau Speer. I have found a small difference between the ladies’ 320 & Heydrich’s – the front right wing’s pennant collar on the latter isn’t on the former. It probably doesn’t signify anything much, other than in the winter months late ’41-early ’42 a/the 320 hadn’t been fitted for a flag. Yet?

Meanwhile - it takes a while to nut out the right step-sequence with this auto i.e. the eventual assembly order & how/when to paint components, it’s deceptively complicated. This week’s progress shots: no panels or doors have been glued & nothing’s had its final tweaks for fit or finish yet. Most of these are tests to see what’s possible & rehearsals because I’m prone to slipping up if I rely too much on a 3-page sequential list - typically at step 65 it turns out step 66 should have been step 31A and steps 32 thru 45 have to be ripped out.



The gap allows for the hinge brackets…







In parallel with the pristine version of the car I need to progress the damaged version, using components from the former as templates for the latter before it’s too late.



Baking-tray foil works well (although the foil seal on Nesquick chocolate powder’s even better) although this test door panel will be replaced by a better one…



…ditto the rear panel. New inner panels also required, these are OK with a few tweaks. They’ll all be damaged later, they just need to fit (the body & each other) for now…









The chrome strip running along each side has been sentenced & reprieved several times – the kit’s is semi-circular in section but RH’s was clearly rectangular and a tad wider. A pain to replace, but fortified with more anaesthetic…



In this last photo I’ve sketched in the required change to the rear edge of the hood-flaps. The kit sedan 320 version’s is straight across but the cabriolet’s forms a gull-wing shape nearer the windscreen…which in turn has to follow the same lines. Testing times for sure…



And those hood flaps also need small sporty air vents inset into them. Progress is way slower than I’d like but was it Kipling who said “Softly softly…”

Very elegant solutions as usual,
J

Great bodywork so far,
The damage going to look real nice with the the foil doors

Thanks guys, it ain’t getting any easier. Seems this forum’s been in what Jerry calls “tumbleweed” mode for a few days – I looked in the other night and the visitor count was 43! I’m not ready to post next instalment pics but I was tempted to post some holiday snaps instead, just returned from a few days in idyllic Shoal Bay/Port Stephens (north of Sydney)

Tim,

Do not be discouraged; this is an excellent project and has uncovered all sorts of rare and interesting aspects of a subject that is rarely even considered by modellers; in this case an assassination of a top Nazi sanctioned by a government in exile with the assistance of an organisation dedicated to setting Europe ablaze - as I believe Churchill directed.

To portray this in 1:35 will be a revelation I feel.

Keep it up - with the batteries recharged after your sojourn there'll be no stopping you I'm sure!

Brian

Thanks Brian, Birubi Point did help recharge...





The story of how Australia has 300,000+ feral dromedaries & camels is best left to Wiki but maybe those samples relieve the claustrophobia of the others pics for a few seconds. Crawling ahead on several fronts, this is the really tedious & ultra-fiddly part:

12 hinges or rather 6 pairs, 2 per door…including the damaged 3rd door, it’s just tray-foil rolled round a wire.









The fun part will be lining the door up on the hinges. The good news is the foil can be easily bent if it’s not quite true, bad news is cyano doesn’t glue metal to plastic too well & sure enough these hinges came off with no more than a dirty look – if Araldite doesn’t work maybe I’ll use watchmaker’s screws.

The hood vents – more foil, using the side vents as templates. The wing-shaped hood edges are scribed in, a tad too thickly but I’m counting on primer/paint coats closing the gap…





Meanwhile the damaged wheel arch/rear panel – so nearly screwed up. I was cutting through from underneath…



…until I could see the cut from above all along its length…



…but I’d got fixated on making that final neat incision from on top. Scalpel poised I suddenly remembered that this was still the pristine version. After sanding away the ridge formed by the under-cutting the plastic’s only about 5 microns thick now, but at least it’ll be easy to snap it out before setting off the IED filming from the front & other side of the car. Then the damaged foil version will be substituted for the aftermath photos. The chassis will need to be tightly wired to the base to prevent movement & the rear wheel/axle protected by a metal plate to prevent it being blown off.

I’m still pondering how to make the damaged wheel/deflated t*re - current thinking is to take a basic mo*ld of a full t*re & sculpt the flat from that using plaster or putty, because I haven’t found anything close to the right size/type/appearance on the market so far.

Next time – Fifty Shades of Upholstery

Keep on the good work Tim ! BTW did you see my PM ?

H.P.

Thanks HP & yep, just replied. Sleepless night ahead methinks!

Sorry it took me a little while to respond. I had to clear away the pile up of tumble weeds from my screen first.
Excellent solutions to some of the kit issues on your tiny car. Those little things make a difference at the finish line.
Dunno if it will help but I made a destroyed tire in my "Another 105mm" dio. I have seen many blowouts on tires where the tire got sperated from the rim,as it were and I tried to show that. It's in the middle of the blog somewhere. HTH
J

Thanks Jerry – a few of the others have said they were taking sabbaticals/breaks so I guess that’s reduced forum traffic. I found your flat (page 13/10th Sept 2014 post - & btw what a stunning dio, surely one of your very best) - looks similar to what I need, presumably a full t*re (i.e. original kit) sliced & puttied? My problem is I don’t have a spare to work with/from, I need all 6 of the kit’s intact. Come to think of it I do have some boxes of spare parts buried somewhere, maybe I’ll get the spade out Monday.

I didn't have a spare either. I carefully scribed around the rim until I separated the tire from the wheel. The thing came in 2 halves so I did each individually.
J

Aha – I forgot to remind us I got vinyl t*res…but you’ve given me a wacky idea - slicing one round the middle of the tread. For the pristine version I could marry the front half to the back half of any old plastic or vinyl spare, as long as it’s the same diameter it would be reasonably invisible. Then for the flat I could melt/sag the vinyl front half & marry that to the other half of the spare modified to fit. I guess that’s a last resort if I can’t find a spare that looks like the kits', I’m still digging for the spares-box.

For those interested in the Research aspect I have news & really should have translated the 39 pages earlier than this. The source is as close to original as possible, Prague Police Chief Heinz Pannewitz’s 1959 commentary on his 1942 investigation into Heydrich’s assassination, published in VIERTELJAHRSHEFTE FÜR ZEITGESCHICHTE - Im Auftrag des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte München herausgegeben. 1985, Issue 33 pp 668-707 – ISSN 0042-5702.

(Google-translated)

1) The car: “At 10.32 am the widely recognizable open car with the number SS-4, in which Heydrich in the uniform of a SS Obergruppenführer…” I claim my prize for guessing right on the licence plate…how could every other “source” including movies & the Prague re-enactment in 2012 get it wrong? Alas no confirmation of the colour but I’m still betting on all four official SS limos being black, black, black & black.

2) The guns: firstly the Kynoch 7.65m shells recorded in the crime-scene diagram were fired from Colts, probably 1903 Model .32’s. If anyone knows of later (pre-1942) Colt semi-automatic models also chambered to take 7.65mm ammo please let me know. Pannewitz even gives the guns’ serial numbers (found after the final shoot-out in the cathedral) as 539370 and 540416, if anyone feels like tracing their identities I’d appreciate it. So I was completely wrong in assuming the shells were fired by Heydrich & Klein. One found near the tram was fired in the air by Kubis to get tram-passengers out of his way after he’d thrown the grenade, and 3 fired back up the street the car had come from were from Gabcik’s pistol as he ran away from the pursuing Klein.

Secondly, as for the Master Race representatives: “Heydrich jumped immediately out of the car and tried to track Kubis, who was only a few feet in front of him ran. He had an aluminum light pistol, cal. 7.65, from the side pocket of the car pulled and shot on Kubis - no shot went! He had the load to forget. His driver had also jumped out of the car and pursued Gabcik, the MP-shooter… only 15 meters behind him, the physically tall driver in SS uniform that almost caught up with him as Gabcik fumbled out of his Colt pistol started to shoot behind. The driver had also pulled his gun and wanted to shoot, but no shot broke, he had his Walther pistol in the excitement pressed on the button, which releases the magazine to take it out. If the magazine has slipped out only a few millimeters, no shot goes more going on. The driver did not have the nerve to stop and his pistol to control ... in this case the damage would be due to a hand movement too remedy and the culprit did not escape. So he ran unarmed…” and got shot in the knee as a result.

So much for the wild-west style gun-play described in every narrative version – more Keystone Cops. I assume the single unspent Patrone-Geko shell (also 7.65mm) found near the car had bounced out of Klein’s magazine when it hit the ground.

Pannewitz is less helpful about the aftermath vehicle(s): “Now Heydrich, completely alone and wounded, helpless victim of any further attack, but no longer took place. A Czech woman stopped a passing van and helped Heydrich get in to drive to the nearby hospital. He sat in the back of the locked one Box and could have been kidnapped without difficulty. But that did not happen”

Two remotely related articles :

http://www.smallarmsreview.com/display.article.cfm?idarticles=1643

http://www.timelapse.dk/models.php

One forum thread dealing with Colt 1903/1908 guns :

http://smith-wessonforum.com/firearms-knives-other-brands/553374-love-colt-model-m.html

I guess this one could be of the two Colt handguns, or a similar one at least (the only visible number doesn't match...) :



Better view

H.P.

Thanks HP,
Very interesting links – love the James Bond cable-pistol. Makes me wonder – Gabcik & Kubis were both packing those Colts on the day with 14 bullets between them (plus a bag with more magazines, abandoned at the scene) so why did they bother with a Sten & grenades when all they had to do was stand astride their bikes, use the 2 semi-automatic pistols at point-blank range, and ride away? Kubis could still have had the grenade ready in his other hand. Very strange that all four players displayed varying degrees of incompetence in those 30 seconds, & such an unlikely fluke that a single piece of shrapnel penetrated the cars’s underpan/chassis, back seat, front seat, Heydrich’s uniform, ribcage & 1.5” of tissue, bringing infection to an otherwise fully recoverable wound.

Anyhow it only took me 2 minutes to piece together the crime-scene ammo & Pannewitz’s commentary (material publicly available since 1959 at the latest) to come up with the Model 1903 .32 as the most likely candidate. And now your links confirm both Colts (with the given serial #s) are on open display in the Prague Memorial crypt museum! So how does a bunch of other writers including MacDonald come up with revolvers & other Colt models & Brownings over the past 30 years? How & why do they make this stuff up when the facts have always been there?

Back to work - as already mentioned there’s a complicated sequence of tasks involved so before tackling the seats the damaged panel sections needed progressing:



The underpan hole may get enlarged but it won’t be too visible in the end. The heavy wire looped round the transmission tunnel’s to anchor the car to the dio base for the blast - I was liable to forget if I didn’t provide for it now. From the other side…



Now the kit seats, inadequate in every way because they’re the basic military issue…



…and after augmentation, front seats separated…



Next, prepping the damaged version of the back seat…



…test-fitting…



Photos of the real thing indicate the bench seat was blown upwards and re-settled askew something like this…



My wife Susie’s offered me two items to help with construction. The first was the titanium plate that’s been holding her broken wrist bones together since January, surgically removed last Monday…



…maybe to strengthen the chassis against the blast?



OK maybe not but sometime it’ll come in handy boom-tish. On the um other hand her second item’s got far more potential…

Hindsight is 20/20.
None of us knows how they will react when an actual loaded weapon is pointed at you at close range,held by someone that is about to,or IS using it.
Never the less,the modeling you've done is superlative as usual,
J

Thanks Jerry - although in terms of superlative modelling there’s someone far more deserving of that high praise – check out Dmitry78’s 1/16th King Tiger over on the Armor/AFV forum (June 1st as at today), it makes my stuff look about as intricate as lego blocks.

I’m sure you’re right about heat-of-the-moment-with-firearms, I’ve never been there (praise be) but can well imagine cool thinking’s a very rare commodity. I’m more critical of the agents’ plan, admittedly hastily formed 1 or 2 days prior in pressurised circumstances, but SOE’s training didn’t seem to emphasise the KISS principle. The Sten had 32 rounds but depended on one shooter successfully assembling it covertly on-site and operating it, vs. two shooters with pocket weapons and 14 immediate rounds + spare mags.

I also can’t fathom why they both left their means of escape – the bikes – leaning against lampposts (one laden with the spare grenades & Colt mags, abandoned it situ) across a busy main road 30 metres away from the bend. They were concerned about appearing to loiter & in fact were standing around for a full 90 minutes, not the anticipated 30, because Heydrich was running late – more than enough time to consider simulating bike-maintenance on the bend sidewalk itself?

It is always difficult to get into the heads of folks at the epicenter of events important as these. Too many factors to be considered for one thing.
Let me throw this curve ball into the works. I read an article years ago written in England and they claimed the reason the hit was ordered on Heydrich was because he was being so effective in governing the "Protectorate" that the folks were becoming too pacified. Heydrich was evil,yes,but he was brilliant and one of the few Nazis that realized the brutal methods employed by almost all the other Nazi Officials in occupied areas were counter productive. Consider the Ukraine,where the vast majority hated the Soviets but the Nazi clumsiness turned guaranteed allies into enemies ! This could not stand and this is why agents were sent in to "stir up the pot" as it were.
Food for thought,
J

That’s certainly an accurate summary Jerry, Heydrich’s carrot & stick policies after only 6 months were working too well. Benes (Czech Prime Minister in exile in London) was desperate to make a statement & considered any reprisals were worth it, hoping against hope there wouldn’t be any. Efforts were even made to suggest the assassination was the result of Nazi hierarchy in-fighting & that the abandoned British equipment was a decoy.

After the Lidice & Lazaky massacres and forever after Benes denied he’d had any part in ordering or promoting it. That wasn’t only to distance himself from the reprisals others had warned about during planning, it was also because the objective was a complete failure - far from stirring resistance it was virtually wiped out for the rest of the war in Czechoslovakia.

Whether Heydrich’s elimination had any other effect will always be moot – it didn’t alter the course of the Holocaust, and it’s doubtful the French resistance would have been subdued much had he taken up his new position there in June ’42. Fortunately his policies hadn’t yet been proved effective in June ’41 because, as you mentioned, if they’d been employed in the Ukraine from day 1 of Barbarossa who knows what would have happened.

The seats were always going to be a test - every other vehicle I’ve made has either been enclosed and/or had plain seat covers not requiring much effort. This one’s obviously different, being of luxury quality plus front & centre in the action. The upholstery had distinctive padding/ribbing which I didn’t fancy scribing in putty & even if I pulled that off I wasn’t sure I could get the right leather appearance with paint.

Enter my better half bearing an unexpected solution she was prepared to part with – real leather & the right colour, as seen in the most recent posted photo. I guess you could say she had some hide…



The lining came off without a fight but after 20 minutes of hand-sanding the back of the square piece (the pale patch) its thickness had reduced from 1.5 mm to…1.499 mm. Who knew leather was tough? Time for some hardware…



…clamped for power-sanding but it proved just too hard to control. However, manually using the disc sped things up – this after about an hour, reducing the strip from 1.499 mm to around 1.0 mm on its way to the required sub-0.5 mm…



Experiments with imprinting the seams proved that thin-gauge wire snapped when using garotte-tightening (each line twisted using a paper-clip), whereas fishing line didn’t…



After tightening I found soaking it in water for an hour & then waiting 24 hours to dry before releasing it stopped the imprints from gradually springing out again.

Carpeting while I waited, using some random material…



…and after several days of torturing (a) leather (b) my fingers:



Fixing the leather to plastic and/or putty surfaces took some testing – I’m not sure exactly what the winning glue’s made of (Selley’s UltraRepair flexible polymer, emanating methane while curing according to the label) but it claims to stick almost anything to almost anything else & I didn’t even get high. The seats still need some tidying up before they’re glued down (curse/bless the unforgiving close-up) but I’m relieved it kinda worked OK – a nice bonus being the auto-weathering of the leather, in scale & caused by repeated handling. Anyone making larger-scale figures wearing leather gear/kit might consider this technique, I’m sure it’s not original but I made it up as I went along without much problem.

The daylight-LEDs light makes the leather look scarlet-ish in photos so I’ve adjusted the last photo closer to the actual hue...on my screen anyway.

Looks the part to me



Well done Tim !

H.P.

Tim,

Outstanding - and a tutorial along the way - priceless.

I may have missed the actual thread but is the car going to be black or dark green - of whatever hue?

And did you decide on pennants etc...?

In any case, keep it up, fantastic work.

Regards,

Brian

Thinking+outside box=brilliant !
J