Hi there

I and am about to embark on the Dragon 2-in-1 Panzer III Ausf J and plan on making it a DAK version.

Ideally I will use both the spaced armour and the longer /60 gun.

I have Trojca's massive book on the Pz.III which does have quite a few photos of the DAK J's but am keen to find more, particularly one with both the features mentioned above.

Annoyingly the photos in Trojca are either of Pz III J's with spaced armour and the short-barreled gun, or of Pz III J's with no spaced armour but the longer gun!

Noel

Somewheres on my shelves I think I have at least one or 2 other pic-books on the DAK- but don't have those titles in front of me right now. If I find them I'll pop them in here later!

The reason you may be struggling to find pics of what you're after is due to the fact that these characteristics are often associated with the Ausf L and not the J. The Ausf L designation was actually back-applied to J's that were finished with the L/60 gun so depending on your source of images, you should be looking for those captioned as L's and you'll likely find what you're after for the combination of spaced armor and longer gun. HTH!

I am trying to work it out from timelines but were there any J's fitted with grenade launchers on the turret? If I am correct, the J was produced up until July '42 which I believe is the same time roughly that the order to fit launchers went out. Would the last J's have these strapped on or is there any photographic evidence? If they were not fitted at the factory, was it common practice to fit them in the field or was this too fiddly a job?

Finally, are there any records of which Panzer divisions got the J's and when? I want to model a late J and would love to know who got the June-July '42 batch. Or is this just information that is not available?

That feature began to appear on Pz III's in Sept '42 and only L's were being produced at that time.

I would recommend first the Achtung Panzer series of books... add to all this ground data, the Panzer Tracts books are a great compliment series. You´ll go a long way with these two series of books

I do have the Ausf N from Dragon in my stash but never liked the stubby gun as much as the longer barrel or the spaced armour on the J and L.

However.... I could take the N chassis (which I believe is the L chassis and not the M) keep the Winterketten from the kit and the dischargers and use it with one of my Ausf J turrets with spaced armour. this would in effect be an accurate model of a winter '42 L... Right??

Your plan sounds like it should produce what you're after for a Winter '42 L. There's a cheaper way to do it though...instead of combining 2 kits, you could just purchase an Armorscale L/60 barrel since they also include the mantlet with it and combine that with the III N "not for use" parts...