¹⁄35

Berlin Pantherturm

Background

This was my small scene I entered in the Berlin campaign here on Armorama. My Vignette started with the purchase of the old KIRIN resin model of a 1/35 Berlin pantherturm. I took the turret and street pole only and rebuilt the ground work, cobblestone emplacement and steel plate myself along with the rest of the ground work. I replaced the resin barrel that was warped with a Tamiya G and I was off and away. I also used half of the old Tamiya field kitchen kit, which came in handy.
My dio is set on the first day after the surrender of Berlin May 1945. The two figures are waiting to join a column and head east to the horrors that await there.

Reference

My main reference for this 'little' vignette was Tankpower volume 6 on the Panther. This has some excellent photos as well as a good, simple rundown on the different turrets and their stats.
These emplacements can be divided into 2 types....
1. Improvised. A turret taken from a damaged tank or just a dug in tank.
2. Purposefully built fortification. Approximately 269 of this type were built. These purpose built types were being built and assembled by the Demag and Krauss-Maffei companies. An unspecified number of these had a reinforced roof [40mm]. This type had a number of variations in the way it was placed into the ground.
Pantherturm1 - a complete steel box emplacement.
Pantherturm 2 - a concrete box emplacement.
Pantherturm 3 - a wooden box emplacement.
These details seem to vary slightly between references so I just stuck with the Tankpower reference.

Makeup

I chose to go with the first alternative, the improvised turret. Apparently there were 25 of this type of emplacements in Berlin alone!
The bricks are Custom Dioramics and VP with a couple of building pieces carved out, modified and thrown in as well.
I tried to include as many small details as I could to draw the interest of the viewer around the scene. It is harder than you think to make a dio like this interesting when you don't have an actual vehicle.
The helmet and rifle came from a great little resin set from VLS or VP called 'German graves' or something like that. The newspapers and mags are from VLS and they are in English on purpose, as I wanted to date the scene and have people be able to read the headline 'Hitler dead', so I used a bit of artistic license. I also used half of the old Tamiya field kitchen kit, which came in handy.