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1:25th scale
Designed for: Intermediate skilled modellers, some fiddly bits!
Reviewed by David Smith
Background info…
When it was introduced, the Tiger was the most powerful tank in the world. The 88mm gun was extremely powerful and the tank was almost impervious to attack, but its combat debut was less than impressive. The first 4 Tigers were sent to the Leningrad area in 1942, but were deployed in single file over swampy ground and in their first day of combat all 4 were knocked out. In spite of a bad start, tactics were soon learned, and other units were quickly trained and equipped with the Tiger, it being then deployed to Russia, Africa, and Italy.
References used…
My own photos of the Bovington Tiger. Lots of shots found on the internet on various sites.
Books:
Panzerkamfwagon VI Tiger, Osprey modelling manuals 13
Tiger I Heavy tank 1942-1945, osprey new vanguard 5
Tiger I and variants, Elements in combat 3 guide to building and painting.
God, Honour, Fatherland. RZM imports.
Tiger I on the eastern front, Histoire & Collections.
‘Tiger in the mud’, Otto Carius
And so to the build…
I didn’t expect this build to have taken as long as it has, I started it last October or thereabouts.
It has been one of those lost kits to me, I couldn’t afford it then, when it first appeared years ago, and I couldn’t really afford it now. Until, after a bit of work that I did for someone paid off and left me with a little spare cash.
Now don’t get me wrong, I thought long and hard before buying this kit, It’s the most expensive that I have ever bought, and not being overpaid, there’s always something else out there that should come first, but in this case, I thought,…go for it!
So there we are, I have always liked the 1/25th scale armour, it has presence without the size and bulk,(and expense) of 1/16th scale, and the Tiger has just so much presence!
I was not sure how I wanted the finished vehicle to look, there being so many theatres, colour schemes and other variants of kit. On researching the late E models, I decided that I wanted to keep the filters, but add S-mine dispensers, and track link holders to the turret, this fit would put the vehicle into quite a narrow time window, and so it was then a matter of finding a vehicle that fitted that window.
I was lent one or two books on the subject, and the one that gave me the specific vehicle that I wanted to model was the excellent Tiger I on the Eastern front, I wanted to model a Grossdeutchland vehicle, and there it was, a Tiger of the 9th company of the III Abteillung during the winter of 1943-44, fighting around the area of Kirovograd.