¹⁄35

Building DML's Pz.Kpfw. III Ausf N sPz.Abt. 501 Afrika

Turret

I had decided early on I wasn’t going to open up either the turret side hatches or commander’s cupola so that expedited things a bit at this stage. First up was the assembly of the commander’s cupola with the vision ports all in the closed position as a multi-part process with its own dedicated step in the instructions. I should note that the kit provides excellent detail for the interior if you choose to go that route and I opted out only for expediency and not for lack of detail.

The assembly of the main gun begins with the construction of the mantlet and recoil housing as well as the coaxial MG34. The instructions contain an error, incorrectly directing you to use part E11 as the interior portion of the gun mount when in fact G5 should be used. The ejector marks on the turret front plate needed to be carefully sanded down since they were visible on the exterior surface and the rest of the gun assembly completed without issue. Only a slight mold seam on the slide-molded one-piece barrel was present, easily removed with some careful sanding before installation. I held off gluing parts E2/E3 until the gun mount was ready to be joined to the turret front plate to allow the gun to remain movable, something the instructions don’t indicate but possible to achieve if careful.

The turret assembly consists of the front plate and gun mount, commander’s cupola, the turret upper shell, the turret lower shell, and the rear turret stowage box. The lower shell had several large sprue/ejector posts still present that needed to be removed and the asymmetrical rear stowage box was assembled at the same time. The turret was then constructed with the front plate and gun mount attached to the upper shell first, followed by the lower shell. All of the weld seam joins were done with liquid glue as each new element was added. The commander’s cupola was then installed along with the rear box, side hatches, and other turret details. The turret-mounted smoke launchers were also assembled for both sides but required a small modification before installation. The small tabs on their bases were not the same size as the slots on the turret, so I removed them and just glued the bases directly to the turret side to insure a proper fit. The smoke grenades would be installed later after painting.

Final details

As a N. Africa vehicle, the kit includes options for jerry can racks to be mounted to either the rear, turret top, or both. Red 07 had the rear rack but not the turret rack, so the styrene and PE combination was constructed and installed. The kit includes parts for 12 jerry cans, including PE inserts to replicate the prominent seam, and all the cans are stamped as 20L Wasser cans. The inserts however are designed for cans that have 3 mount posts while the kit supplied items only have 2, so some careful surgery and construction was needed for their assembly. Dry-fit of the cans into the racks determined that 8 cans could fit, so 8 were built and set off to the side.

I also took this opportunity to add a bit of detail to the front hull. The front Notek light needed a wiring conduit added to connect it to the front head light on the glacis, so I used some solder cut to length and bent to the correct shape to replicate this. The solder was then carefully glued into place with liquid glue.