¹⁄35

StuG.III Ausf.G Late Production Dec.1944

In the belly of the beast

Now that things are shaping up on the outside, we can turn to the interior and the fighting compartment casemate. Dragon provides a basic interior to work with which should be more than enough if you plan on putting any figures into the hatches. You get a reasonably detailed floor and firewall, a fairly complete gun cradle and breech and radios. Sub-assembly is the word of the day here. Assemble everything you can in logical sets (see photos) and paint as you go. I assembled the radios on their mounts as per the instructions. Don't do this. Assemble the radios and mounts as separate units and paint, then attach. There are some gaps to be filled where the radios mount to the sponsons. To correctly attach the floor plate, first slide the firewall in place, then the floor plate, making sure it sits nicely, then use a little bit of glue to tack the pieces together and let it dry. Attach the sponsons, and add the driver’s vision glass. Paint everything in the interior that needs painting at this stage. I also added the extra side armour (parts G23 and G24), driver’s visor and front armour plates. From the instructions, it's difficult to say which way the visor cover should go, but after checking references, I think I got it the right way around. Before installing the driver's glass, I painted around the opening to reduce the chance of messing it up later.

Dragon's assembly procedure here doesn't sit well with me, particularly after dry fitting the floor/firewall, casemate and rear hull. There is too much room for surprises if you do this. What I did was to fix the floor/firewall in place after painting and attach the casemate without the gun mount assembly. You can see the gap in the back and the join along the hull/sponson. Fill the back gap, repaint and just paint over the hull joins. There is a noticeable step here in real life, albeit a little higher, and so it doesn't look entirely out of place. You can fill if you wish. If you had followed Dragon's instructions, the hull joins would be impossible to fix and the back gap (which would have disappeared) might have caused bowing problems with the back wall of the casemate. It always pays to dry fit every major component to see how they interact with each other before you start gluing to avoid surprises. Much later in the build, I noticed a sink mark on the outside back wall. I have read of others finding similar glitches in thick pieces, so have a careful look. One other odd sink mark was found on the lower hull around the rearmost left return roller mount. I left it alone because it is not very noticeable, and looked to be more trouble than it was worth to try and sort out.

The gun cradle is pretty straight forward. Leave the breach assembly off until after painting the various sub-assemblies. You'll need to check your references for painting, no call outs here or for the rest of the interior. I painted the floor with Vallejo Red primer followed by Cavalry Brown. The rest of the interior was done with Buff lightened with a bit of white. The radio faces are Field Gray. A wash and details picked out completes the painting stage, some pigment will be added during the final weathering stage to simulate a bit of dust and dirt. Leave the gunner's periscope off for now, it can easily snap off otherwise. The barrel is molded as a single piece with rifling detail at the muzzle, but there is a slight seam to be eliminated along the length. The muzzle brake is a multi-piece affair, and nicely detailed, but check for mold lines on the inside faces.

We'll fit the gun assembly and roof later, first let's take a look at the fenders and back end.