Hi guys, I want to build a Tiger mid in the Italian campaign as accurate as possible.

Im very confused about what kit to buy because I dont know how accurate it would be and I dont now for sure if what I want is correct.

I want a Tiger with the drum cuppola, no zimm, early roadwheels and my main doubt are the feifel filters...with or without?

what kit?

I know I can go with a late model but I really want to reproduce a mid one.

Please gents help me.
thnxs

Hi Camo, do a goggle search with the tags "Tiger I" and "Italy". You'll find a ton of info to answer all of your questions.

Hi Bob thanks for your reply, did that before posting and couldnt find a clear path.

Thank you all.

Hmm, I must have found 4 or 5 links on the first couple of pages I looked at (plus a lot of model reference links) using those key terms.

Just glancing at the page I found that a mid production would be fine. Also, I would suspect the Fiefel air system would have been deleted by then as they were mainly used for the African campaign's extra dusty environment.

As for the zimmerit, they started using it in mid-'43 but some tanks already in service may never have gotten it applied.

BOOKS! Buy them.

So it seems the sPZ 504 was in Italy a little with both mid and later mid tigers. The earlier Tigers were survivors of Tunisia.













I believe these photos are from the 504 in Italy, though I can't read Japanese





BE CAREFUL though, I think the 504 also had later Tigers, which it seems you didn't want.





As far as which kit to get, I would say the Tamiya is the most reasonable option. I have built one recently with Voyager AM and Fruilmodel tracks. The early-mid Tiger market is the most under served in market of Tigers. We have a lot of late, late mids, and earlies, but not mids.



Good luck. Also, wait for David to comment, he is the man when it comes to Tigers.

Hello Camo,
I can provide some info for you. For Tiger I’s in Italy you have the choice of three units:
sPz Abt 504. 17 Tigers of its 2nd Kompanie was available to oppose the Allied landings on Sicily in July. (the 1st Kompanie was lost in Tunisia). The 2nd Kompanie was badly handled in Sicily with only one Tiger able to escape to the mainland, but it was lost after a short time during the withdraw to mechanical failure and was scuttled by its crew. The unit was reformed in Holland (Sept 1943-June 1944) and returned to Northern Italy in early June 1944.
Tigers issued to sPz Abt 504 are as follows when initially formed and sent to Sicily/Tunisia in March 1943
• 20 in Feb 1943
• 6 in April 1943
• 11 surviving Tigers from sPz Abt 501 were transferred from sPz Abt 501, which at the time, was organized as 7 & 8 Kompanie of PzRgt 7 of 10 Pz Div in Tunisia. These 11 Tigers were originally issued to sPz Abt 501 between Sep 1942 & Feb 1943
After reforming, sPz Abt 501 was issued the following:
• 11 in Feb 1944
• 34 in March 1944
• 12 in Jul 1944
• 15 survivors transferred from sPz Abt 508 in mid-Feb 1945
For Tigers of sPz Abt 504 w/o Zimmerit you are limited to the early versions issued before the unit was reformed. The rest had Zimmerit and were the Mid version.

sPz Abt 508. Formed Jul-Aug 1943 in France (Mailly-le-camp) and sent to Italy at the beginning of Feb 1944 fighting in the Anzio-Nettuno area. Then conducting a fighting withdrawal towards Rome and subsequently further north to the Apennines to Bologna. The last 15 Tiger I
‘s were transferred to sPz Abt 504 in mid-Feb 1945 Tigers issued are as follows:
• 17 in Dec 1943
• 28 in Jan 1944
• 1 in Feb 1944
• 5 in March 1944 (8 Tigers subordinated to the Abt from Tiger Kompanie Meyer (see below)
• 6 in April 1944
• 27 in June 1944
sPz Abt 508 was issued exclusively mid and late version Tigers, all with Zimmerit; the exception being the 8 Tigers that were incorporated into the Abt from Tiger Kompanie Meyer.

Tiger Kompanie Meyer. Formed at Innsbruck Austria in July-Aug 1943 and sent to Italy sometime before the Anzio landings. Tiger Kompanie Meyer fought in the Anzio-Nettuno area until being subordinated to sPz Abt 508 on 3 March 1944 and then incorporated into the unit effective 11 May 1944. The Kompanie was issued only 8 Tiger I’s in July 1943, these were all early versions w/o Zimmerit.

In regards to which kit to use, you need to choose the unit, date of operation, and if possible, a specific vehicle. See the links below. The month-by-month production changes list on Alan Hamby’s site will tell you exactly what changes were made to the Tiger I during Production, extremely helpful for accurate modeling. The Tiger I Info page can tell you what production variant each kit on the market represents as well as accuracy issue fixes. Most helpful. There are also a couple of articles on the Missing Links site written by Thomas Jentz & Hilary Doyle here:
• A Question of Accuracy: http://www.missing-lynx.com/panzer_facts/pfaccuracy.htm
• Creating an Accurate Tiger I Model: http://www.missing-lynx.com/panzer_facts/pftiger.htm

See these also:
http://www.alanhamby.com/tiger.html - This site has a great wealth of info including month by month production changes, unit histories and tons of photos.
http://tiger1.info/kits.html - This has info for most of the kits that are on the market in 1/35 scale, excluding the most recent releases. Click on the kit and it will give you some info on it such as what production period the kit represents, and (most helpful), some suggestions for correcting flaws and accuracy issues. Additional info from the same site can be found here: http://tiger1.info/vehicle.html which has some excellent walk-around photos and scale drawings – really cool!
http://www.tiif.de/index.php?sid=6efb20c179ac415c7b28351730699513 – A web forum dedicated to identifying period photographs of Tiger I’s. The photos are divided by unit and if you join the forum you can ask the Tiger Experten.

I hope this isn’t too long winded. I also hope you can get your kit started. You can spend the next eon researching and exploring these and other sites.

Good Luck!
Cpt. C. Sosebee, USA (Ret)

That's some great info, C. Thanks for posting it. I know, this isn't my thread, but it's still helpful to me and a lot of others.

Mark - I will admit that proper reference material makes the job easier, but please keep in mind a lot of people on the site are running a limited budget. They, myself included, can't afford to buy new reference material for every project in the works. We instead depend on sites like this to find the information.

Re-reading my post, I did not intend to mean like I was annoyed with the original poster. I really should have typed "these books, buy them, they are good!"

I wouldn't have posted all of the pictures and data if I didn't want to help out, but I can see now how I came across. I made that post pretty late in the night because the original poster wasn't getting a lot of replies.

I must sound like I work for a publisher. Anyways, didn't intend for that to come across as aggressive as it did.

lol its all good guys.

Thanks a lot for the ton of info! its crazy.

Feel free to post and comment in this thread

Books...I love them just ordered some, the kits will be on hold for now.

cheers!

Glad to hear it was just a miscommunication and that you hadn't really gone over the edge on us Mark!