¹⁄48

Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf. H

I used some of the tools from the kit, but made the gun tube cleaning rods and the shovel. The brush part of the cleaner rods was just a blob of filler paste sanded into shape; not very visible, but the ends of the rods were drilled and shaped on the ends to resemble the plug and socket fittings. The shovel blade was cut from brass sheet then bent into shape and glued to a piece of stretched sprue. Then followed lots of contorting of brass strip and swearing as the mounting brackets were made and fitted. Other added details were an additional spare wheel wired on over the left hand vision port, and spare Friul track links added over the right vision port as well as all over the front of the hull and on the turret roof.

The standard spare track on the nose was mounted under a brass strip which replaced the kit’s rack. I tried to work out how spare track was actually fitted, but even in very clear photos it is hard to see the method used. Occasionally extra metal brackets were welded on, but often it looks like the track links were wired on or sometimes just wedged into place. I wonder if they were sometimes spot welded on to the body, but maybe that’s impossible. Mine were glued on (!) apart from that on the turret, which was wired around the schürzen stays.

Disasters. Losing the headlamp was a minor one; luckily I still had the Bandai Wespe, so pinched that. Then one night I was thinking about how amazing it was that the turret hatch had stayed glued open all these years; the next morning, on my wife’s birthday, I went to get her card from the model cupboard (an obvious hiding place) and managed to snap the hatch off. Much worse was when I came to fit the Friul tracks – the sprocket teeth weren’t just too big, but weren’t even spaced correctly for the tracks. I don’t know if this is a common problem, and I suspect they are really intended to fit Tamiya’s kit. I must admit this is one bit that I don’t feel that happy with; I had to cut the teeth off the sprocket, then add them, made from square section rod, back in through the track once it was in place. That was my plan, but in fact turned out to be harder than I thought, and I’m not sure that the effect I achieved is that great. Sorry. Fig 13 shows the tracks being held in position overnight while the superglue fully sets.

Painting

As far as painting goes, I followed the apparent current wisdom, and finished all the construction before commencing. I’m not totally convinced about the wisdom of this. In the old days it was always recommended that some bits are painted before construction. I guess the current way is down to the far more common use of air brushes nowadays. I spoiled myself by buying one (I think I bought the set up recommended by a reviewer on this site . . .can’t believe how cheap the Chinese compressor was) and so inevitably chose a three colour camouflage finish. See Figs 8 to 10.

It’s an interesting effect to see the first time, compared to what I used to achieve with brushes. Is it to do with seeing so many photos in black and white, that once you’ve rendered the softly sprayed camouflage pattern in full colour, it somehow looks too beautiful? Some models are criticised for being too pretty, but I can sympathise with people not wanting to cover up their lovely paint job. . . I’m currently reading “Tank” by Patrick Wright (Faber&Faber, 2000); the author is a cultural rather than a military historian, so he has an interesting and off the wall take on the subject, but it is about tanks. He quotes a Scottish artist and poet, Ian Hamilton Finlay, who has apparently made a series of artworks of “pastoral tanks”; he says “To camouflage a tank is to add ‘the amiable to the severe’ – the beautiful to the sublime, flutes to drums.” The point being of course, that a tank is an embodiment of mechanised brutality, and camouflage is an attempt to make it resemble the fields of corn, the trees and the earth which are its antithesis, the very things that give life rather than bring death.

For identification, I hand painted just tactical numbers on to the zimmerit of the schürzen. Again, it’s partly a cop out, but it is the case that from 1944 on, the application of divisional markings and even national markings became erratic. Also, I couldn’t choose where this tank was meant to be, but in this state, I guess it could really be anywhere in the east, Italy or France some time in 1944. I think the numbers finally looked OK after the 15th minor touch up. See Figs 11 and 12. I’m afraid that at the moment it still isn’t quite finished. The photos show that the weathering isn’t complete, hence the suspension looks a bit of a flat colour and the upper body looks very clean; the interiors of the hatches are also just dark yellow, and need their own weathering to be done. Apart from that, the only detail left to add is the aerial, to be fitted into the home made mount (the kit had nothing for this part). I’m still pondering how to do the aerial; the real thing was tapered which suggests sprue, but really that’s too delicate. I’m sure I can think of some way of getting a taper like that on a thin wire.

Oh well, it’s been 28 years, what’s a few more weeks?