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Armor/AFV: Axis - WWII
Armor and ground forces of the Axis forces during World War II.
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spitfire303
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Vendee, France
Joined: December 22, 2006
KitMaker: 1,437 posts
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Posted: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - 12:54 PM UTC
Since few weeks I've been hearing my hands crying loud to touch the bare plastic again. In order to change a little bit from my lust build -The last Befehlspanzer VI ausf B which is waiting the delivery of a set of tracks, I decided to start another project of a ... Tiger ausf B in the rare .... command version An original idea

As a subject I've chosen a vehicle from schwere Panzer-Abteilung Feldherrnhalle (sPzABt.FHH). The tank was the vehicle of Dr.Nordewin von Diest-Körber, the battalion's commander. You can easily recognize it without any doubts thanks to the mark "I" on the turret and the gun mantlet.

The vehicle was abandoned by it's crew in May 1945 after it bogged down in soppy terrain near a Bohemian town of Treboni (also known in its German version as Wittingau).

Just for the historical record, this Tiger Ausf B was produced between beginning of July and beginning of September 1944. One can say it with certitude after examination of available pictures (presence of zimmerit - cancelled in September 1944, and poison gas detectors on the turret - implemented into the production in July 44 from the 98th turret to be precise)















For the base for this build I picked up from my stash the DML's kit 6303






you may find the review of that excellent kit here



I will use some after market PE parts from the kits in my disposal (Lion Roar and Griffon). However, this time it will be more out of the box than AM as the kit propose a large number of PE parts and accessories.



I started the build by the lower hull and tracks










Given the photos I have in my possession I tried to personalize the rear plate a little bit



I'm not sure if I'll succeed but I'll try to make a base with the Tiger bogged down as seen on the pictures above.

I hope you'll enjoy this build.

Tigerly yours

spit



panamadan
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Minnesota, United States
Joined: July 20, 2004
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Posted: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - 01:03 PM UTC
Spit, Great start! What does the "I" marking on the turret mean? Any plans on modeling the tractor that is towing it in the first photo? Dan
c5flies
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California, United States
Joined: October 21, 2007
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Posted: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - 05:44 PM UTC
Looks to be the start of another great project, Pawel. Will be following along once again!
spitfire303
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Vendee, France
Joined: December 22, 2006
KitMaker: 1,437 posts
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Posted: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - 08:14 PM UTC
Thank you for your comments Dan & James.

Dan, if I make a vignette it will be based on the pictures of the bogged down vehicle so no tractor to do.

For the "I" mark on the turret and mantlet. It's the mark attributed to the battalion commander (in fact it's a Roman style "1". Beneath you have a pic of the structure of 503rd/Feldherrnhalle battalion from "Tigers in combat". In fact all Tiger II battalions had pretty the same tactical structure: 3 combat companies each with 3 platoons + command platoon with befehlspanzers.



spit
koenele
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Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium
Joined: January 17, 2006
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Posted: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - 08:16 PM UTC
2nd that

very clean built so far!!

following this one!!

chicane
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Dublin, Ireland
Joined: March 25, 2008
KitMaker: 201 posts
Armorama: 161 posts
Posted: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - 09:54 PM UTC
following this one with interest. i have same kit in my stash love the work done on your last kingtiger
CMOT
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ARMORAMA
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England - South West, United Kingdom
Joined: May 14, 2006
KitMaker: 10,954 posts
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Posted: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - 04:11 AM UTC
Pawel I look forward to what you come up with, plus when Herbert gets interested in this build the information you and he come up with is a great help for anyone building this vehicle.
H_Ackermans
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Gelderland, Netherlands
Joined: July 11, 2006
KitMaker: 2,229 posts
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Posted: Friday, October 17, 2008 - 03:45 AM UTC

Quoted Text

Pawel I look forward to what you come up with, plus when Herbert gets interested in this build the information you and he come up with is a great help for anyone building this vehicle.



Thanks!

One early comment, are you going to add the lifting lugs to the exhaust covers?

About pinpointing a production date for a certain vehicle based on which features it has.

Henschel worked on a First In Last Out principle. This means, stock was being delivered and stored, and NEW stock was placed ahead of older stock.

This makes it very tricky to say when a vehicle has left the production plant. Evidence for instance can be seen in turrets on the production line in May 45 which had the early 15 mm loader's hatch.

New orders often took months to be completely implemented on ALL produced vehicles, also due to the aforementioned way of stocking by Henschel, but also, due to the bombing raids which took out the Henschel plant for several months resulting in greatly reduced production numbers.
Abydos
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New York, United States
Joined: August 11, 2005
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Posted: Friday, October 17, 2008 - 04:23 AM UTC
Out of curiousity is that a Russin tractor or an allied tractor,
guygantic
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Antwerpen, Belgium
Joined: August 19, 2006
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Posted: Friday, October 17, 2008 - 06:16 AM UTC
Good work so far, clean build, I agree ! G.
spitfire303
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Vendee, France
Joined: December 22, 2006
KitMaker: 1,437 posts
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Posted: Friday, October 17, 2008 - 12:20 PM UTC
Thank you all for your comments.

Herbert, thank you for reminding me about those lugs. I completely forgot about them.

You're right about the difficulties to define a vehicle production date in general. However IMHO for this vehicle we can say that it surely was produced between July '44 and september 44. The two elements I was talking about show clearly the production period.

- the gas detectors were to be installed from july '44 and according to Jentz's book they confirmed that on the very beginning of July.
- the zimmerit was ordered to be phased out immediately on the beginning of september 1944.

Those two elements are present on this vehicle so it's almost certain it was produced between july and september 1944.

spit
spitfire303
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Vendee, France
Joined: December 22, 2006
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Posted: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - 12:23 PM UTC
Hi,

The construction of the upper hull is finished in 95%. The only (I think) thing is the antenna mount and its bin on the back. I have some hard time to find those mounts (for the hull and turret) and the big base. My spare parts box or kits I have don't contain it.

I decided to drill the headlight as I'll try to do it in open version. Any good technique for simulating the glass inside (I thought about painting it silver)?











One thing I'm really happy about is on the picture below. I wanted to do some nice cleaning rods jack. I don't really like the plastic one supplied with the kit. The problem is that this part is only available in rather expensive AM sets. I have on but I decided to keep it for another project. So I looked in my PE rests what I could use to make a scratch built. The King tiger's PE jack mount caught my eye. With one jack bracket you can make one jack for one side of the hull. Luckily I had two of them.

What you need to do is to cut the longer MA8 part in place you should bend it, make a little shorter the smaller part you just cut off. Glue on the bigger one and than glue it to the hull. To get the part that would block cleaning rods you take another part from the jack mount set (MA6). You glue it in open or closed position. I also use the small "butterflies" I put on the top of the bracket.






Now I'm comng back to my octopus Befehlspanzer.

spit
bulivyf
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Praha, Czech Republic
Joined: April 03, 2006
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Posted: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - 01:10 PM UTC

Quoted Text

Out of curiousity is that a Russin tractor or an allied tractor,



Hi, this are a Russian tractor Stalinetz. This photo show transport to Russia after war. I this locality stay some
King Tiger. (Maybe one stay in bog till now - this say eyewitness) Only this on photos have Zimmerit.
Miloslav
captnenglish
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California, United States
Joined: May 20, 2008
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Posted: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - 05:00 PM UTC
This looks like a really interesting project
thomokiwi
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Christchurch, New Zealand
Joined: January 11, 2006
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Posted: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - 08:32 PM UTC
I like the idea and I definately like the Kit. Where do you find your photo's??
Galwitz
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Connecticut, United States
Joined: June 12, 2007
KitMaker: 498 posts
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Posted: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - 02:33 AM UTC
I'm not sure about original sources, but here are some pictures of bogged "I" (at the bottom, unfortunately in very low quality). There is also a short text about the circumstances.
http://www.plusmodel.cz/war-gallery/trebon/index_en.php

Dolin’s site features some in much better quality:

Town of Trebon in 1945 (bogged "I"):
http://www.dolin.estranky.cz/fotoalbum/FOTO-1939-1945/Okolo-Trebone_____-1945

Town of Vesely nad Luznici in 1945 ("I" in tow):
http://www.dolin.estranky.cz/fotoalbum/FOTO-1939-1945/veseli-nad-luznici-1945/1038

The book “May 1945 in the Czech Lands” by Tomas Jakl features one more picture of this befehl KT being hauled onto the railroad flat car in the town of Tabor.

As Miloslav mentioned above, there are 2 more KTs recorded from the same area (well, it's about 40 km west of "I") and time frame. Both have been abandoned closer to the demarcation line west of the village of Brloh few hundred meters apart of each other. Pictures of #213 are featured in mentioned Tomas Jakl’s book. The second one (#112) was only sketched and no photo is known.

Here is Tomas Jakl's page on the subject:
http://mujweb.cz/www/tanks/LastTiger.htm
spitfire303
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Vendee, France
Joined: December 22, 2006
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Posted: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - 09:20 AM UTC
thank you for the answers,

Thomo, finding pictures of a particular vehicle is not always easy. It's a hard forum, google lurking time. Apart two first pictures for this vehicle I did find them on the http://www.dolin.estranky.cz/ site (the address was given to me on another forum). I also started a topic on axis history forum and got some answers.

Ales, Thank you for all those links. They're very interesting.

One word about the kit. The kit itself is excellent and the PE fret is quite large but like always the instructions are really bad. I know that this is DML's feature but... what's the point of giving large PE set when there's no instruction where to put those parts. It's not impossible to find that out but it's not the way it should work. For example they have included PE parts for spare tracks hangers on the turrret. I couldn't find what the parts were for so I just compared them to the griffon set I have so I found it but... I'm sure there some hidden DML's agents on this and other forums looking what we write about them etc. So why the h...l they won't take care of the manuals. They must know that's it's their weak point but somehow they really don't care.

spit
SGTJKJ
#041
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Kobenhavn, Denmark
Joined: July 20, 2006
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Posted: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - 09:21 PM UTC
Interesting build, Pawel. I will follow this one with interest.

Looking forward to see more
Galwitz
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Connecticut, United States
Joined: June 12, 2007
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Posted: Friday, October 24, 2008 - 03:33 AM UTC
As somebody has pointed out over at ML a while ago, there seems to be rather unique feature on this particular befehlstiger - the commander cupola seems to have additional concrete armor applied around the base. Specifically, it appears to be noticeable on the photo taken from the rear. I’m not an expert so I can’t guarantee it’s really the case, but it sounds interesting regardless…
TuomasH
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Turku ja Pori, Finland
Joined: September 10, 2008
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Posted: Friday, October 24, 2008 - 10:11 PM UTC
If this is going to be as interesting as your earlier KT, I will definately follow this!
spitfire303
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Vendee, France
Joined: December 22, 2006
KitMaker: 1,437 posts
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Posted: Saturday, October 25, 2008 - 10:13 AM UTC
Thank you for your replies. Tuomas I'll try to make it as much interesting as I will be able to.


Quoted Text

As somebody has pointed out over at ML a while ago, there seems to be rather unique feature on this particular befehlstiger - the commander cupola seems to have additional concrete armor applied around the base. Specifically, it appears to be noticeable on the photo taken from the rear. I’m not an expert so I can’t guarantee it’s really the case, but it sounds interesting regardless…



Wow this is something extraordinary. Looking over the pictures know I think there's something unusual in this commander's cupola.
Any chance you fin the link on LM?

spit
H_Ackermans
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Gelderland, Netherlands
Joined: July 11, 2006
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Posted: Saturday, October 25, 2008 - 10:24 AM UTC

Quoted Text

Thank you for your replies. Tuomas I'll try to make it as much interesting as I will be able to.


Quoted Text

As somebody has pointed out over at ML a while ago, there seems to be rather unique feature on this particular befehlstiger - the commander cupola seems to have additional concrete armor applied around the base. Specifically, it appears to be noticeable on the photo taken from the rear. I’m not an expert so I can’t guarantee it’s really the case, but it sounds interesting regardless…



Wow this is something extraordinary. Looking over the pictures know I think there's something unusual in this commander's cupola.
Any chance you fin the link on LM?

spit



Where are those CSI photo improvement software programms when you need 'm!!!

I can't figure out what it is, concrete would seem a good guess.

Also, what is that all around the loader's hatch? Loose parts from the turret interior?
H_Ackermans
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Gelderland, Netherlands
Joined: July 11, 2006
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Posted: Saturday, October 25, 2008 - 11:18 AM UTC

Quoted Text

One thing I'm really happy about is on the picture below. I wanted to do some nice cleaning rods jack. I don't really like the plastic one supplied with the kit. The problem is that this part is only available in rather expensive AM sets. I have on but I decided to keep it for another project. So I looked in my PE rests what I could use to make a scratch built. The King tiger's PE jack mount caught my eye. With one jack bracket you can make one jack for one side of the hull. Luckily I had two of them.

What you need to do is to cut the longer MA8 part in place you should bend it, make a little shorter the smaller part you just cut off. Glue on the bigger one and than glue it to the hull. To get the part that would block cleaning rods you take another part from the jack mount set (MA6). You glue it in open or closed position. I also use the small "butterflies" I put on the top of the bracket.






Now I'm comng back to my octopus Befehlspanzer.

spit



Hi Spit,

You're going to hate me for this since you're so pleased with the result but take a look at these scans I made:



spitfire303
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Vendee, France
Joined: December 22, 2006
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Posted: Saturday, October 25, 2008 - 11:26 AM UTC
No I don't hate you Herbert I know I miss some details like the curved forms which should keep each of the rods in place. I thought about it while doing this part. I just don't have an way (I think) to reproduce them. I still believe what I've done (even if it's not extraordinary) it's better than the plastic part given in the kit.

spit
H_Ackermans
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Gelderland, Netherlands
Joined: July 11, 2006
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Posted: Saturday, October 25, 2008 - 12:43 PM UTC

Quoted Text

No I don't hate you Herbert I know I miss some details like the curved forms which should keep each of the rods in place. I thought about it while doing this part. I just don't have an way (I think) to reproduce them. I still believe what I've done (even if it's not extraordinary) it's better than the plastic part given in the kit.

spit



It is rather easy to make.

If you have some good plastic strip, the 40 thou thick and 80 wide I think is the correct one, or 20 thou thick, anyway... what you need is a handdrill, with that, get a bit that is the thickness of the cable and/or the rods and drill 5 holes in the strip. Then, take a fresh X-acto blade into the handle and cut it of the strip and if you're really taking care, you can cut 2 out of it is you brace the sides.

Hope this makes sense how I tell it but that way you get the best result for a curved rod holder.
 _GOTOTOP