just a question. Does the panzer 4 h late always have the side skirts and brackets fitted. The ones on the dragon kit are a bit thick, and I am trying to find an easy way around this, without having to resort to PE.

many thanks
Paul

There are certainly photos of what are said to be Hs without side skirts, both with just brackets fitted but no skirts (seems more common) and without brackets or skirts (seems less common). They do always seem to have the turret armour fitted however. My understanding is that to reduce width during transportation from factory to unit, the skirts and brackets weren't fitted at the factory, but once they'd completed their railway journey, and it didn't always happen, hence sometimes no brackets.

The turret armor was bolted on and wasn't removable like the side skirts. The skirts, if installed, were just hung on the mounts and easily knocked off and lost. There's plenty of photo evidence, as Matthew pointed out, that they weren't always installed.

Why not just get 0.010" sheet styrene and cut out your own? PE is overkill and most kit supplied ones are too thick. Just make your own, I'd say.

Schurzen were formalized as standard factory-supplied / production equipment for all new Pz.III, Pz. IV, and StuG (III, at that time)produced from April, 1943.

So, late-production (April and May 1943) Pz. IV-G, and all IV-H would have been produced with hull schurzen racks and turret schurzen sets attached. History of course tells us that many IV-H were seen from time to time lacking their plates (which were actually easily knocked off by shell-strikes and by scraping against stuff, and also sometimes just lost or left behind by crew, as well as being detached for rail shipment), and a smaller number actually lost or had removed their racks post-factory. Early-style racks were apparently poorly designed and prone to damage and to losing plates....

While I can offer no formal documentation for this, I suspect that crew and / or unit shops may have occasionally removed damaged pieces of racks - and never replaced them (although there were in place from mid-1943 formal equipment regs requiring retro-fit of III and IV tanks which came without schurzen or which lacked them).

As factory racks were mostly welded onto the hull-sides, they could not just be un-bolted... so, IF a modeler wants to show missing schurzen racks on IV-H, perhaps one could be sure to create either "torched-off stubs" at attachment points, or other scars and marks to maybe show this removal? In cases where the rack frames were bolted on - maybe as reflected in the parts having evident bolt-heads? - maybe one could provide a bolt-hole at the "removal site" or maybe a bolt -head placed to fill that hole?

It is always "legit" to have your IV-H (or later G, J, or mid and later StuG III, or any StuG IV) depicted showing lost or missing side-plates, mis-matched paint-schemes on plates, etc. I would suggest that about any IV-H or J "needs" to have its turret schurzen in place, albeit it can be bent up and damaged (but NOT so that damage would foul the turret rotation - THAT would surely be addressed asap by the crew, I think) - and the side access doors could be knocked off and lost.

Just my opinions and suggestion, of course!

Bob