Yes, I had the same exact problem on my DML halftrack. The plate where the doors fit and the side plates. There was a huge gap there that cant be filled with putty. I am wondering whats up!?

This is not a mistake. I just checked my refs, on the Panther A & D there is a small gap between the rectangular grills and the rear hull plate. It was normally covered with the mesh screen. So build it as is and if you have the mesh, it should cover the grills and the blank space. The middle section should go all the way back. I hope this makes since, if I had a scanner I'd post pics, unfortunately I don't.

Mike

If you read carefully what I wrote, I said that when you snug the upper hull down until that central section between the rear radiators comes into contact with the rear plate, a narrow space occurs between the rear rads and the rear plate. We agree on this. I checked my references on this too. This is the correct position. But when you look at the front end, the upper and lower hulls are mismatched by about 3mm. I checked my references and this does not look normal . ( My kingdom for a digital camera!!) And if you start at the front end and match up the upper and lower glacis, there is a resulting extra wide gap the full width of the hull at the rear - NO part of the rear deck comes into contact with the rear plate, and this is also not normal. The lower hull definitely is longer than the upper. No correction is needed at the rear end - it's a good fit. The leading edge of the upper glacis needs to be lengthened by a few millimeters until it reaches the lower and any small gaps filled. Actually, without careful measuring, it's hard to tell whether the upper hull is too short, or if the lower hull is too long.