Nebelwerfer in travelling position

In the last days I have updated my Nebelwerfer a bit. I changed the position of the legs, so that I can use them to be towed behind trucks or other vehicles.
So here some pictures of the new design.
If you are interested, you can buy them now at my Shapeways shop.

German Army Museum in Dresden

Last weekend I had a chance to visit the new German Army Museum in Dresden.
Who knows Munster and comes to Dresden to see tanks will be very disappointed. 
Dresden is a Museum to explain and show different aspects of war or aggressive conflicts. No wonder that you can see there things from more than 500 years history. From early knights, their weapons, the evolution of riffles and much more to cold war exponents, they show a lot.
The most interesting part for me was of course the WW II department. As I said, not that much tanks, only some vehicles but therefore you could see what war means in relation to movies, to civil people and a lot more aspects I never thought about. At the end I found some tanks outside, most of them after WWII. On the other side they showed for example which animals humans had used or still use to support them for fighting. 
Here is are some highlights which I liked the most.

A Horch from Paris, later used by General De Gaulle

A German Einheitskübel

An American Tank from WWII

This is the rest from a German Submarine, a Seehund, which was found some years ago

the model of the so called PAris gun from WWI

German Shelters from WWII

okay the paining is strange, but it is a German Marder

150 mm search light

Sherman DWG (Deep Wading Gear) on the beach in Normandy

As D-Day comes closer I have started to get my shermans ready to jump onto the beaches of Normandy.
So one of the first modifications is this Sherman with a deep wading gear. Some other variants of the Sherman  will follow in the next weeks.

The first two pictures show the old Metal Troops model of the Sherman DWG.

Here is my version, based on a Dragon Sherman which had the right back to install the dwg to it.

The device is again printed in 3D. 

If you are interested in this version, so send me an email and I will offer the print via Shapeways.

Sherman T1 E3 mine exploder

It took a while to draw this special Sherman tank. Quickly I found out, that the drawing from George Bradford in his Book "American Armored Fighting Vehicles" is not 100% correct. There are some details missing at the point where the wheels get fixed to the tank hull. So I collected tons of built Sherman with mine Exploder to get the missing details.
The next point was the painting. The get beside the small plates is not that easy, so I had the paint them several times.
Now finished I have to say I like this tank, it is a very unusual tank and tooks very impressive.

If you check Wikipedia, you can see, there are still tons of different variants for the Sherman tank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_Sherman_variants

Panzerjägertriebwagen 51 in 1/144

By the end of the war the Germans were building three of these giants on rails. Armed with two Panzer IV turrets they should run in the German Panzerzüge.
The Americans found them at the manufacturing plant Steyr in Münichholz. Other sources talk about Augsburg. Two of them were at Breslau, nearly finished, the Russians got them.
I found on the internet, that one unit was ready to be taken over by the German Wehrmacht. 
Who knows, but anyway, none of them saw action.
Tecnical data are not really reliable, what I found are these data:

total length: 14390 mm
width:            3000 mm
height:           3640 mm

As a basement for my 3D drawing I used the really good book "Panzerzug Teil 2 " from Waldemar Trojca. There you find a drawing from where I took my dimensions.
So here is the first preview after some hours.

Panzerjägertriebwagen 51

And here with the first details, even I have to add much more, but you can already see the progress.

World Tank Museum Versus Serie in 1/144

Today I had to clean up the basement and opened some boxes, laying there for several years.
And while I cleaned up I found a small treasure. One complete unopened Box of the old WTM series.
While I decides to sell it in the next days on Ebay, I thought it would be nice to take a look at the tanks again.
It took me an additional hour to find the pictures of the small dioramas which Takara added the boxes.
So here are the dioramas from the old versus Series:

Tiger versus Sherman in 1/144 Fight

King Tiger versus Joseph Stalin 2

Tank IV versus KV-1

Elephant versus T-34

Panther versus Sherman

Last Tiger in Sicily II the Siebel Fähre

My diorama shows the moment when the tank comes to the shores ready to embark on the Siebel Fähre to return to the Italian main land.
To bring some action to the diorama, I opened the driver and commander cupolar and added the driver and the commandant to the tank. All staff are from Preiser and they are volunteers.
But first there was the problem how to make the water surface?

My first attempt with Silicon was a disaster. It looked not very realistic.

So I tried next way to make my own water. This time I built a frame with the dimensions of the water and closed the frame with thin aluminium foil on the bottom. After I had crumbled the foil and stretched again, I filled it up with gypsum. And yes that convinced me. After the Gypsum was tried, I started coloring it. After painting I added some waves with white paint. On top of it I painted it with colorless Acrylic paint.

On the banks of the sea, the German Engineers had built a small bridge with matches, so that the Tiger could drive onto the Siebel Fähre.

After paining the wooden platform I started with the cabin on the platform. All dimensions I had to take from the pictures I found on the web. Thanks good, on one picture I saw a soldier standing, what gave we a good scale.

On the landscape I added some small flowers to change the look from plain Dessert to Sicily. To get a better understanding how it looks like in Sicily, I checked the area with Google Earth. So no trees there but some green, actually the difference to the dessert was not that big.

Besides that I added a lot of details to the ferry like the name Tag "Hai" which was made with white paper from an old business card and a black pencil. I searched the Internet for the word "Hai" in old German letters, but nothing convinced me, why I wrote it later by hand.

Finally some oil drums, the position lights and the rescue boats and it was done.

The Pontoons and the end parts.

First test with the tank and the bridge on it.

Building the land part.

First test with landscape and ferry.

The first water surface made with Silicon.

Second try, this time with Gypsum.

Where is the ferry?

The bridge with some of the new details.

Some of the stuff I wanted to add.

The pontoons and the bridge.

The bridge and back end of the ferry.

The Bug of the ferry.

All Flowers are made with real moos. 

The tiger turret.

The commander checks if everything is ready?

Now with driver and painted cupolas.

Slowly as Tigers always had problems with the gear box.

The crew waits for the last Tiger.

Front view of the Siebel Fähre.

The final version of the "schwere Fähre".

This is the book which I used for the design of the ferry:

Peter Schenk, Karsten Klein „Deutsche Landungsfahrzeuge“ Edition Erich Gröner

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=187180

http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/tigers-02.htm

http://www.lonesentry.com/panzer/tiger-tank-sicily.html