Tamiya 1/48 Panzer III Ausf.L Part 1

 

One of the real workhorses of the earlier half of the war, nearly 6000 built over 12 different variants before being made mostly obsolete by advances in tank design. I feel like the Panzer III may not get the recognition it deserves being in the shadow of its late war cousins. 

The L variant boasted an upgraded 50mm KwK 39 main gun, thicker armour and torsion bar suspension in an attempt to bring the aging design up to snuff, but ultimately it was regulated to secondary roles from the middle of 1943 onwards. However the chassis did remain in production as the basis for the StuG III assault gun right up to the end of the war.

What's in the box!?

As you can see the kit comes with 3 different sprues and the two identical sprues containing the tracks. It was a surprise to see the die cast chassis piece when I opened it up (I obviously didn't pay much attention to the box when picking it out at the hobby shop lol). That's something new to me and I guess the extra weight will give a more satisfying feel, I'll have to remember not to use my usual poly cement however. 

Winter Camo

In the battlefields of WW2 tanks and other vehicles were often roughly coated with whatever the crews could get their hands on to match the changing environments. In winter this meant roughly covering over the default German grey or "Dunkelgrau" with lime or chalk mixed with water. Using old rags, mops and brushes this wasn't a fine art but proved to be an effective camouflage nonetheless.

So I've acquired some German Grey by AK for the base colour and I'm going to attempt to do a whitewash over the top of that to hopefully end up with a realistic looking finish, we'll see how that ends up.

This is a Panzer III J  (you can tell by the different armour configuration on the front of the hull and turret) on the eastern front and it gives you a good idea of the whitewash used and how the paint underneath is beginning to show through.

First Post!

 For my first post I though I would share a few pictures of the models I have previously completed in the past 2 years or so and a little bit about them.

Tiger 2 Porsche turret 1/76:

This was the model that got me back into modelling. It's one of those airfix 1/76 starter kits which includes glue, a brush and some old dried up paints. I recieved it as a Christmas present and I really enjoyed it. So much so I purchased a vallejo oiled earth wash especially for it and a few more bits and peices to really kickstart the hobby.

Churchill 7 1/76:

Another Airfix kit, although a total opposite to the King Tiger. I didn't particularly enjoy this one if i'm honest. I believe its quite an old mold? It was quite frustrating getting things to line up properly, namely the main hull and the tracks on either side if I remember correctly. So mine is a little wonky and I don't think I ever completely finished the paint as a reult of being a bit fed up with the thing.

SU-100 1/72:

Really didn't know what to expect when I bought this Zvezda kit but the quality and the ease of building it was really impressive, although coming after the nightmarish Churchill I might've been easily pleased. Bought a set of MLG ww2 Russian paints as well for this model which finished it off nicely.

IS-3 1/72:

I love the style of these early cold war era soviet beasts and I just had to get my hands on an IS-3. This Trumpeter model has a great amount of detail even if parts were a little fiddly at times, finished again with the MLG paints it looks pretty smart.

T29E1 1/35:

My first attempt at one of the massive 1/35 scale monsters and I chose a T29 after loving the T29/T30/T34 set of tanks on WoT. This was a Hobbyboss kit which was fine, nothing bad to say apart from the tracks being a bit of a slog to put together (tempted to try some ebay diecast tracks next time). I used a Humbrol light olive spray can for the base and experimented a bit with Vallejo thick mud and splash mud around the tracks and some dry Revell weathering pigments roughly brushed on.

Jaguar XJ6 1/43:

First of my car model experiments is this Jaguar banger racer. Ignore the paint for the most part it was a really quick job. I mainly just wanted to try out simulating damage and it turned out alright for a first try. It was done by starting with a 1/43 die cast model and cutting the rear and front end out with a dremel and replacing it with a roughly molded shell made out of thin sheet aluminium, then crushing it up as much as was appropriate.

The end! Thanks for reading if you got this far and stay tuned for future projects.