¹⁄35

hold on...hold on...

Part 3 "#221 - Tiger"

This is my 1st ever construction of a Tiger tank. I think it turned out well. This should have been the easiest model I have ever built, plenty of photo references, along with both crew accounts and even a short film clip. Maybe if I had built 3 or 4 before this project, I was really scraping for every scrap of info I could find about what wasn't there or should have been there.

Reference Photos ref01, ref02, ref03, ref04 and ref05

Excerpts from emails by Mr. Holt;
"Tiger 221 is quite famous in its own right based on the well-published photos that we've all come to recognize. The added bonus is that Daniele Guglielmi (well-respected Italian researcher) and I spent 2 years painstakingly researching the action. We interviewed members of my dad's tank, as well as a crew member of Tiger 221. Every angle was triple checked, and tested for face validity. Hell, I spent an entire weekend researching sun & moon conditions just to see if my father could have seen the things he always claimed to have seen. We took nothing for granted, and tried very hard not to inject any bias into our analysis. There were a couple of details that we purposely omitted out of respect for the German tankers. It was truly a fascinating story, and we think we recreated the action as well as anyone could have done."

"The famous author Thomas Jentz did a real disservice to the incident, by repeatedly publishing some captions saying that 221 was self-destroyed. He probably drew that rather hasty conclusion when he saw the main gun in full recoil position. My dad and his gunner just laughed when they saw that unfortunate caption. They just shook their heads and said Jentz had no idea what happened, because he wasn't there, and when some 60 ton beast tries to kill you, you tend to remember it pretty accurately. The German crew member also flatly denied that they self-destroyed 221. The battle conditions and the speed of the action simply could not have enabled this. Jentz is a fine researcher, but he simply got this one wrong. So we put a lot of extra effort into creating a fact-based, accurate accounting of what really happened, to correct any miss impressions that Jentz may have created. "

Since this was my first Tiger a lot seems to stand out in my mind so I can comment on various items as I go through the construction. Kits used;

• Tamiya Tiger 1 Late with crew #89566
• Eduard's Big Tiger Update Set #3504
• Verlinden Tiger Engine Compartment #1330
• Aber Accessories AB35A10 1/35 AB35A10 Front and Back Mudguards for Tiger I

The engine compartment came first of course. I noticed how large the grating over the engines was and actually thought you might be able to see past them. Silly me.

Photos 0030, 0030a and 0030b

The zimmerit came in the Eduard kit. There was specific damage inflicted to the front plate of #221 where the first shot of #11 hit. This is my attempt to match the dent and zimmerit loss.

Photo 0031, 0031a and 0031b

Continuing on this is my 1st attempt at fixing the shot damage; I made it a little large to begin with and added some under coating. I also started on some of the Eduard PE.

Photo 0046, 0047, and 0048

After finishing the zimmerit and most of the PE I stopped to gather some final information.

Photos 0032, 0032a, 0032b, 0032c, 0032d, 0032e and 0032f

Excerpts from emails by Mr. Holt;
"Tiger 221 was curiously void of markings, and I'm not sure why. I've looked over and over again at the photos and see no evidence of turret numbers or 504th unit symbols. The missing Zimm on the front is due to the explosion or heat of the fire, as much Zimm is missing toward the front of the left side, so the chip is just like a wrap-around. I have a photo of 221's rear and there is no symbol there.

My dad used to say that the Tiger was gray, but this seems highly inconsistent with all the published information about Tiger camo in the 504th. I think it's camo-painted according to published sources, just not real visible in the photos due to missing Zimm, dust coating, soot, and lack of color contrast in B&W."

"In all the years of looking at these photos, I never noticed that the Zimm was there in some photos and missing in others. I've noticed debris had moved and the jack was suddenly missing, but not that piece of Zimm. How embarrassing! I found another photo that my dad took the next morning after the action, and the Zimm is intact there too (Vipperman was in B so his photo would have been taken around the same time). Looks like the Zimm came off later that day or in the ensuing days, when a lot of curiosity seekers came out.

However, my dad's photo is a little better than the Vipperman photo, and there is no evidence of the 504th spear.

"I've looked over and over again at these photos for camo, and there does seem to be some shading going on, looks like in a small pattern. Was there such a thing as gray Zimmerit-coated Tigers? I would think a gray Tiger would appear darker and more uniform in the photos."

Photo 0033

"I checked with the Tiger experts regarding the color of 221. No possibility at all that it was gray, as they stopped producing gray Tigers somewhere in 1943. I know that 221 was manufactured in Feb 1944 (pretty sure of Feb, but early 1944 for sure). No Zimmerit Tigers were gray. So it would be a subtle earth tone camo pattern, obscured with a lot of dust."

The finished model with the base coat applied, marking applied, camo applied, and the first wash and start of the drybrushing applied to try and tone down everything else.

Photo 0034, 0034a and 0035

And of course my 2nd attempt to get the front damage correct.

Photo 0037

I was finally at the point where I could bring all things together and do the final weathering and applying the final details.