Revell PzKpfw.IV Ausf.H 1:72

Review by: Geoff Coughlin (June 2011)

Thanks to Revell Germany for supplying our review sample: www.revell.de

A little bit of inspiration…

Background

The armoured fighting vehicle PzKpfw. IV formed the backbone of the German tank units in WWII. Between 1933 and 1945 it was built in greater numbers than any other German battle tank of the period.

The H version, which for the time was equipped with side skirts to increased armoured protection, was built from 1943 to 1944. The main armament consisted of the 75 mm KwK 40 L/48 gun, which had a good penetration capacity.

In addition there was one MG 34 machine gun built into the front of the hull and one coaxial to the cannon. Driven by a 300hp V-12 Maybach HL120TRM petrol engine, the vehicle developed a maximum speed of 38 km/h with a combat weight of just 26,000 kg. The five man crew comprised commander, gunner, loader, radio operator and driver.

Initial Assessment

My first impression is that this is an impressive kit given the small scale. As an aircraft scale modeller (mostly), I have seen plenty of 1:48 and 1:35 armour models in my time but you don’t see too many of these smaller 1:72 scale subjects made-up at shows.

Having said that, this is a really impressive bit of tooling with very fine levels of detail across the board. The images in this review should speak for themselves and you can decide what you think, especially as armour is probably your ‘thing’ – seen as you are reading this review!

The Package

4 sprues moulded in light brown plastic, a set of instructions and small decal sheet make up the package.

Click on Image to enlarge/go back.

Sprue trees

You can see that the hull top is very clean and crisp, as is just about everything else. The tools, for example, are cleanly and accurately moulded onto the surface but will look excellent when spray-painted and given a subtle wash and maybe filters (see your Techniques Bank for how to apply these weathering techniques) in keeping with the small scale.

The road wheels have fine moulded detail and although I can’t give an opinion on accuracy, they certainly look consistent with some of the images I have seen on YouTube where there’s some great footage of Panzer IVs in action.

Other highlights from this kit include: the detail on the suspension arms, track links and sprockets. There are some ejector pin mould-release circles left during the making of the kit, but these are well placed in out of the way or hidden locations, which is a nice touch.

The engine grills look fine for the scale and I can just see that they will look good after a wash and dry-brush (again, see your Techniques Bank for how to dry-brush). The tracks are broken down into small sections, which should allow you to pose them fairly naturally. In fact, if you add the side skirts, much of the track section along the upper run will be invisible, so what’s provided looks to be just fine in 1:72 scale.

There’s no flash or excess plastic on any of the parts, so this will help build time greatly.

Decals

There’s a small sheet with the respective numbers and unit badges for the options contained in the kit. These are:

• 20. Pz. Div Stab Russland, Tarnopol 1944 in sand, grey/green and dark brown (all and only Revell colours references are given)
• 23. Pz. Div 6. Kompanie, Ungarn 1944 (colours as above).

Instructions

These follow the usual Revell format, with Revell colour references, parts and sprue layout diagrams followed by a 33-Stage build and finishing sequence. The sequence looks to be logical to me, but of course you will want to leave off all the small, delicate parts like the MGs until near the end of the build to avoid damage.

To sum up…

Well, I really like this little kit.

It is well detailed and when you open the box the parts say ‘build me’! The last time I built an armour kit in this scale was when I was about 7 – you may remember the old Airfix range – which was fantastic fun at the time and you know, looking at this, it might just be time to get reacquainted with the scale…?

I might just have a look at this one myself and there’s an equally nice looking Bradley staring at me, so be sure to check out that one in Here Now very soon.

Highly Recommended.

Geoff C.