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The Bridge - Duempelfeld 1945

"The Bridge - Duempelfeld 1945"

This diorama is based after a famous photograph in one of Steve Zaloga's books on the Sherman. The bridge is completely scratch built with a material called "Depavit", which is almost like "Balsawood". The tank is Dragons M4A1 with chicken wire and evergreen attached. The figures are from various companies such as Verlinden, Custom Dioramics, Warriors, etc. The water was made with 1 1/2 kilo’s of colored resin, poured over the now almost hidden rubble of the blown bridge.

Sherman

The Sherman is Dragon’s M4A1 with Aber´s etched parts. The wire attached to the hull and turret is supposed to hold chicken wire, for ease of camouflage. Patches of steel plates from stripped Sherman’s have been welded to the hull, to give more protection to the dry ammo stowage. The Rhino device is a Warriors part that fits the hull very well. The Sherman was given a base of car primer to have all the metal and plastic parts "melt" together as one piece. Then Tamiya´s XF-64 was applied with an Aztec, followed by a cloudy over spray with Vallejo´s Faded Olive Drab. Many local washes and filters were applied with Oil colors. All equipment was painted separately. So were the individual tracklinks by AFV. A great piece of modeling madness, as fiddeling it to the tank is quite a job to do! The mud is just pumice plaster and some static grass mixed within, which then was airbrushed with Dark Earth.

House Ruin

The ruin is a Verlinden part which fulfilled my needs very well. It was pre-shaded with Tamiya´s NATO Black and then cloudy over-spray’s of Light Gray and Brick Red followed. Washing was carried out with oils again. Many dry brushings with orange and red colors were brought on top of it. The inside of the ruin was scribed with screwdriver and other appropriate tools (as they are not inscribed by the manufacturer), and painted an off white.

M2 Tread way

The M2 was built from sheet styrene by a friend of mine, who told me that he could do better than the castings from PSP. I’ve had that kit first and came up with the idea for this diorama. When I showed the PSP kit of the M2 to my buddy, he was furious about their casting abilities. So off he went to do any better. And he sure did!

The bridge

The bridge itself was made from Depavit, Styrofoam and plaster. Depavit is foam with a layer of carton on each side, which when pealed off display’s the foam. All stones are scribed separately with a lead pencil. Chunks of stones were removed for more realism. The cobblestone street was done in the same manner. The broken off part of the bridge was modeled again with pumice plaster, which then received the last cobblestones and debris left from the blast of the explosion. The bridge was painted with various brownish tones to achieve anything else but uniformity.

The Diorama

The bridge parts were glued (to the earlier cut to size base of Styrofoam) with white glue and set aside to dry thoroughly. Then tile grout was spread all along the riverbed, in which I embedded all the rubble and debris from the former arch above. Roots, static grass and moss were laid out around the edges and the bank. After another good drying process, everything was painted in various colors of greens and browns, and then given some dark washes with oils. Followed by severe dry brushing, I was ready to get wet!! 2.5 kilos of colored resin was poured in the riverbed. Layer after layer. After 2 weeks of pouring I was ready for the final stages including those splashes, created by the tank rumbling over the M2 tread way. These splashes are just some clear plastic kit sprues, heated and stretched over the flame of a candle. Just like doing antennas! The waves were created with "artificial water", which has the same qualities as white glue does. It’s just spread out with a brush. Around the splashes it’s being laid out thicker and in a circle. When it starts drying, it starts getting a film. That’s the right time to brush those circles up from the ground. I had to do these circles 4 times, as the "water" falls back to the ground again. But after piling up enough of the stuff upon each other, I’ve achieved the desired effect. Gunnar Baeumer