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Recycling Your Old Kits

Tamiya StuG II (first release in 1971)

This particular kit, I built it some 20 years ago, had been rebuilt 2 times already and received it’s final rework between 1997 and 1999. It was clear that I could not achieve a crispy surface after all that reworking which took place so far and so I decided to make a late version G, with Zimmerit and concrete armor. It should resemble a StuG III captured by US forces, shown on the last page of Squadrons Sturmgeschütz III in action.

The main reason for building this Stug III was a statement by Karl Brandel, the president of the modeling club I previously joined: there is no way to built an accurate Stug III from this ancient Tamiya kit. It is outsized and lacking from incorrect angles and poor detail. I already learned my lessons about accuracy of old Tamiya kits, but having a chance to blame the boss was a too great temptation and so I ignored all his warnings and advice.

When I started in 1997 all I had as additional details were some late type support rollers from Hobby Schmidt and individual track links from Dragon. Research was limited to several Squadron issues, I did not have the ACHTUNG PANZER Stug III issue during that period. I also did not have all those Panzer and Stug III kits from Dragon/Revell/Italeri/Tamiya. I have them now and left over a lot of spares which could have helped me on this project.