01Pan by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
02rt4 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
1/35 Tamiya Panther D
Paints: Golden High Flow
Weathering: Iwata Com.Art acrylics; Vallejo Model Color; oil paints; pigments (Sennelier & Gamblin)
Base: PVC Board; Sculptamold; Hydrocal; Woodland Scenics rock molds; Woodland Scenics Snow Flock; Krycell Snow Wash; Krycell Fine Snow
OK: let's call the Korsun Pocket Panther a wrap. As a refresher, I thought of this moment in history (late January-early February 1944) as a good place to put a Panther D without Zim in a 1944 Group Build. In turn that meant a winter build. I like the history because the battles around the Dnieper in early 1944 showed how badly the Wehrmacht had slipped since Citadel - and foreshadowed the general disintegration of the Eastern Front after the Red Army demolished AG Center in June 1944. This period also illustrated the arrival of what the Soviets called "Deep Battle" - a concept developed since the mid-30s that envisioned multi-staged battles that allowed massive exploitation with armor after a major breakthrough. (If it sounds like early war Blitzkrieg, especially early Barbarossa, it should. By 1944, however, the Soviets were able to deploy much larger elite mobile units than the Germans ever had to play with. They needed them because the Wehrmacht was a much more formidable foe that the Red Army in the summer of 1941 had been. On key to Deep Battle was the increasing supply of American all-wheel drive heavy trucks, allowing Soviet forces to move whole armies quickly in winter and even in most of the "rasputitsa" in spring and fall. This period also saw Panthers arriving in the German OB in considerable numbers. The problems encountered at Citadel with Panthers had been largely solved (although the Panther's operational reliability was always a problem because it was a very hard vehicle to service) and the Panther's powerful combination of gun/speed/armor made it a dangerous enemy. Here are a couple dressed for winter combat: I think the top is a D model - and I'd say it lacks Zim judging from the very even ID numbers:
04win by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
03Wcam by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Armor modeling guru Mike Rinaldi thinks winter camo is the toughest thing to weather and I'd agree. But, if you're going to model armor, it's pretty much necessary to employ it because you could have found winter camo on vehicles during about 1/3 of fighting on the Eastern Front, and the very nasty winter of 1944-45 in the West. I used a lot of Rinaldi's techniques on this model. He points out that white wash - probably much more common than white paint - would have been applied several times. So he recommends two or three applications of hairspray weathering over white over base along with mapping and oil shading/washes after each of them. I used Mission Models white twice over hair spray and then applied a coat of AK "Washable White" over everything. At the very end I put on blotches of Krycell "Snow Wash" (very good stuff - you could use it for an entire winter weathering - check the excellent "Precision Ice and Snow" videos on YouTube) and a sprinkle of Krycell Fine Snow. At the very end I put on Com.Art "old oil" mixed with varnish on the rear and a final blotching of "smoke" Com.Art which is great for emulating scuff marks made by the crew. Might add that I do not spend a lot of time weathering tools. It would add visual interest if done. But after looking at a lot of tank pics, I think the very good YouTube German modeler Hamilcar Barkas is right when he claims tools were usually painted the base color. War is the enemy of art.
I thought the model needed a base - although perhaps that was a mistake. As I noted in the last post, I wish I would have used a different 3-Color camo scheme: I did the common Dunkelgelb with olive and red-brown splotches. I wish I would have painted large sections olive because it would have stood up to the whitewash better. Even after darkened by weathering, the Dunkelgelb base is still a pretty light color and doesn't stand out well with whitewash applied and removed. Putting a white tank on a white base has obvious problems when it comes to photo time. That said, if I wanted to stick a tired Panther - running for months after Citadel - in a Russian winter, I did want to suggest something bleak.
I think the base worked out okay. I used PVC as the canvas - a material I really like - it's quite strong, very light and can be cut very cleanly. The ground cover is Sculptamold - a really neat brew that resembles paper mache. I put an original batch down with brown pigments in it. After that dried, I put another thin cover on but left it white. White Sculptamold actually looks quite a bit like snow - but not enough. I put on a layer of Scenic Express "Snow Flock" and sprinkled that with flock of dead bark and yellow grass. Last came a dusting with Krycell. So the idea is to have a winter scene, but one where the snow has begun to melt. (That was indeed the case during the Korsun battles - 1943-44 had a very mild winter.) This also fits the idea that the white wash has been applied several times. A heavy snow on the model was tempting - but that would have destroyed basically all of the weathering. (Still a neat idea - an old Tamiya armor model with a bucket of snow might make a good dio.)You might note that there is only a very faint "track" visible in the snow. Hamilcar pointed this out too - he claimed that unless you were dealing with fresh mud or deep snow that even a big tank like a Panther did not leave deep tracks over the surface - that's the point of having a wide tank and wide tracks. Here's a pic of model and base:
05leftft by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Building a dio is a lot like an elementary school art project and brings out the inner child. So I wanted to put something on it - just ground wouldn't do, even if that would have been likely in the Ukraine. So I made some small rock formations by putting Hydrocal (like plaster but much stronger) in a rubber rock mold from Woodland. I painted them gray and then dry brushed several coats of increasingly lighter gray - finishing with white and put on black and umber washes. These are very good products. I'll get some bigger molds for larger formations. As it stood, I made a kind of low rock formation that you might find all over northern Minnesota - I hope there's at least one in the Ukraine. I also picked up some plastic barbed wire from a company called Pegasus. When I popped the box on it, I wasn't sure. But I think it worked pretty well. You can assume that barbed wire would have been all over a combat zone on the Eastern Front - a real "oldie but goodie" in the weapons kingdom. Here are details:
07rockDet by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
06WireDet by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Where are the people? The tank's buttoned up - the Russians are Coming. (And they're going to keep coming. I'm starting a Tamiya SU-76 to help with Bargation in June 1944.) A few more Panther pics below.
Eric
09turdet by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
11rdeck by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
12left! by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
08front2 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
13rt-r by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
14rt-ft by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr