Hi all,

I've got a Dragon Late Tiger I (6383) and I'd like to drop an interior in it. Have any of you any feedback regarding which is the best/most accurate kit? I see offerings from Jaguar, Verlinden, and CMK--among some others. Your help and expertise is greatly appreciated!

I am building the Tank Workshop interior with the DML kit on and off. It's incredibly detailed, but I'm not sure how accurate it is. (The cmk kits are easy to build, but the detail is a bit simplified.)

I do not believe that the CMK offerings are correct for a late model Tiger I. I have a Tank Workshop Tiger I late interior but it is for the Tamiya kit. Retro fitting it into the Dragon kit would most likely require some scratch building and some surgery but I'm sure it would be a good place to start as Andras has indicated. I have not seen the Verlinden offering but I do have their Pz III and Pz IV interior sets. They are rather incomplete and chunky in terms of detail. It is possible that their Tiger I offering is similar. I've never had hands on the Jaguar offering unfortunately.

HTH,
Andrew

I don't have any of these sets but I do know a few things about Tiger interiors, so I looked at some photos online to get first impressions.

TWS: they advertise a single set for Early and Late Tigers. Given that there are dozens of differences, this is a red flag. Do they provide two alternates for the many different parts? I cannot tell. They publish only a single photo of each set, and I can't find any buildups, so I can't answer that question.
The photo that they do publish is much more like an Early than a Late, although the surrounding kit is a Late.
The TWS cooling fans (which they sell separately) are very crude compared to online images. Their main fire extinguisher stands on the floor, but it should be fixed to the wall. The boxes by the radio operator are strangely wrong, as if they were based on a single photo taken from a low angle. Again, there are complete diagrams online. The boxes under the floor don't seem to have open tops and don't hold shells. The engine compartment lacks the cooling pipes.
In summary; there's a lot of public information about the Tiger that did not influence this set, and it may supply Early parts instead of Late. It reminds me of the state of Tiger knowledge 20 years ago.

David

Thank you David. Your Tiger knowledge is always VERY MUCH appreciated.

Another question: Would it be possible to build the 6383 kit into Tiger 007?

Verlinden's most recent Late Tiger set #2300 :

Definitely better than TWS. Front upper wall looks good, MG34 ammo bags are appropriately sized, the new counterbalance is included, the fuel tanks have nice texture.
But I don't see the turret internal storage bin, there are no baffle plates on the cooling fans (Dragon have them in their kits), the cooling pipes are not in the engine room, the underfloor boxes are just solid blocks, and I don't see any boxes by the radio man.
Once again I can't find enough photos to speak of the whole set.

David

Well.
007 was a Befehlstiger.
Dragon's original Late Tiger 6253 had the parts for Befehlstigers and I understand that 6383 is just the same kit with added Zimmerit panels. So it should be possible to build the tank externally.
But as for the inside? Befehlstigers had an internal generator, extra radios in the turret, more electronic boxes on the walls, and transformers where the turret MG used to be.
No kit or aftermarket set offers that and, unfortunately, nobody knows what it should all look like.

David

I will add this; the best starting point for a Late interior that I know of, is the Rye Field kit 5010.
The parts in that kit are mostly correct. The engine pipes are missing, some items should not be there, but it's closer to Late than the two resin sets that I discussed.

David