From FrederickC: Early Panzerkampfwagen VI 'Tiger I' [Death Star] (40 points)

This is my first submission for the Challenge XII Quadrant, and I will be starting at the Death Star with a Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausführung H, also called the Tiger I, of the 502nd Heavy Panzer Battalion. The battalion was the first unit to receive and field the Tiger I in August 1942, and it was one of the most successful German heavy tank battalions, claiming the destruction of 1,400 tanks and 2,000 guns.

The model is a 1/48 scale Bandai kit that I picked up on eBay when I first started doing 25-28mm World War Two gaming. Apparently this is a big 'can of worms' among participants in the painting challenge, but back then there were very few vehicles available in 1/56 scale, so most of our group members gravitated to either 1/48 plastic kits or 1/50 diecast models.

The Death Star connection is the 'Of Questionable Design', specifically that the Tiger I is considered to be over-engineered, using expensive materials and labour-intensive production methods. In the early period it was prone to certain types of track failures and breakdowns and was in general limited in range by its high fuel consumption. It was expensive to maintain, but generally mechanically reliable. However, it was difficult to transport and vulnerable to immobilisation when mud, ice, and snow froze between its overlapping and interleaved Schachtellaufwerk-pattern road wheels, often jamming them solid.

The validity of the problem of the overlapping road wheels was proven when the kit arrived from the seller. It was obviously a second hand kit as it had already been started, but what the original owner had done was glue both the inner and outer road wheels on all the odd numbered axles before realizing their mistake. I contacted the seller about the problem, who refunded my money without wanting me to send the kit back. It languished for many years in my pile of unfinished projects until I thought that a repair was possible. I used a fine saw blade to cut off all the outer wheels from the odd numbered axles. Now all the inner wheels could glued onto the even numbered axles. I drilled holes into the axles and the back of the wheels I had removed with a pin vice to take a short piece of florist wire to provide strength to the joint when I glued them back in place with a little bit of epoxy putty to fill the slight gap. Once all that was done, the rest of the kit was assembled as per the instructions.

Prior to this, I had already acquired a Solido 1/50 diecast Tiger I in grey. It is visible in the background of the pics below, but not part of the submission. Other than a bit of tweaking, new decals, and adding a muzzle break, the Solido model is as I bought it. Since it was already painted in Panzer grey, I wanted to use the same paint scheme with the Bandai model to make them part of the same unit. After priming it with black, I used AK Interactive acrylic 704 Dunkelgrau, and then drybrushed the raised areas and corners with a lighter grey. Special parts like the tools and tow cables were painted appropriate colours, and a few parts got either a black or a dark brown wash. Once the tracks were on, I hit the lower areas with AK Splattereffects Dry Mud. 

 

The points being claimed are as follows:

1 x 28mm vehicle @ 20 points

Quadrant Challenge 'Death Star' - 'Of Questionable Design' - 20 Points

Great work on the Tiger Frederick.  I was amused how your issues with the partly made kit mirrored the real life issue with this beast.  Nice weathering over the grey pain work.  I love the results people get from their WW2 vehicles but am warded off by terms such as "kit assembly", "decals" and "weathering".

A minor editing point - Curt prefers that we use Helvetica font for our posts.

You are quite right that there is some debate over the "correct" vehicle scale for 28mm war-games.  There are actually three factions "1/56 or die", "1/48 or die" and "whatever, they're just toy tanks".  Being of the third school I'll leave the field of battle to the other two factions.