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King Tiger Ruins

Starting Point

The project began with Tamiya's Ardennes Front King Tiger built as a vehicle from the 505 sPz. Abt. that would have served somewhere in East Prussia late in the war. I used several Aber PE sets, Fruil tracks and Archer transfers on the vehicle as well. The pieces of equipment are mainly from Verlinden with a few pieces from Plus Models and Warriors as well. The walls, road and sidewalks where created with casting plaster and molds that I made from plastic sheet and L beams.

Details of the Story

The first detail of the diorama I'd like to note is the figure, which is from Verlinden and is the first full figure I've painted. It is a very simple figure, but I think it adds a lot of perspective to the scene. I just had the idea of an old woman looking up at the monstrous King Tiger wondering why anyone would build such a machine, that was specifically designed for destruction, and why did they have to use it to destroy her little town.

If you look carefully there is a faucet at her feet. A former coworker told me he grew up next to a Polish immigrant who moved to the USA after W.W.II. He said a Russian soldier ripped the faucets off the walls of his home. He claimed they thought if they hammered them into their walls at home water would come out. I just had this mental picture of a solider dropping it there after his buddies had a good laugh at him and explained his plan wouldn't work. Who knows if the story is true?

One more detail I'd like to note is the 95 on glacis plate. The site Russian Battlefield has many great pictures of captured and knocked out vehicles which all have numbers painted on them like that. To be honest I'm not sure why, but would speculate it was a cataloging number for photographed vehicles. I'd never seen it used on a model so I thought it would be a neat detail to incorporate into this setting.