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Ardennes 1944 - Ridin High!

How it was time to take the Tiger out of the box and continue putting it together. Didn’t come across any difficulties during construction. The model in the picture and the model on the box match nicely. The only thing that had to be adjusted was the left fender and the brackets for the track tension tools. This was also done in a few hours. When the tank was glued together “bare” I sprayed a base coat of Humbrol 83. Let this dry well for a couple of days. While this was drying I started the tank crew. This is a kit by Dragon, no. 6014. With this kit I had to do a few modifications, because the tank commander, Kurt Sowa, had lost his right lower arm in the beginning of the Normandy conflict. I gave the commander’s pants the Italian camouflage pattern again. So cut that arm! Goggles had to be made for the radio operator, I made this from stripped electronic wire and wrapped it around the needle of glue bottle. To retain the curvature of the lenses I added a small drop of super glue.

I replicated the color scheme for the uniforms from the Panzermodeler site, thanks to Jules Dolina for the research. The only thing that did not fit in this kit were the braces for the head phones, these were too small so I ended up scratch-building them. As an extra I fitted all throat microphones and headphones with wiring made again from thin sewing thread and glued them with a drop of superglue.