Feature Article with Bill Curtis
A note from Geoff C…
We have just entered 2024 and we received the very sad news that Bill C passed away unexpectedly. Bill was a great friend to Sara and I as well as SMN and you will find many of his superb armour builds here in the magazine. Bill’s knowledge of all things German WW2 armour was encyclopedic and many people will have learned so much from him.
Bill’s Grief you see here was his final and last scale model built and it feels such an honour to include it here – thank you Bill and happy modelling my friend up there – you deserve it all.
Here’s a look at how it all turned out…
Over to you Bill…
In 1931 a French expedition set out to travel from Beirut overland to Indo-china with seven Citroen Kegresse halftrack vehicles to prove the feasibility of the type over a long distance. Most arrived safely proving the point and enhancing French reputation for military vehicles. Many countries watched this experiment none more closely than Germany who had also started planning for a set of halftrack vehicles for the army in the range of 1 to 18 ton. The one ton version was designated Sd.Kfz.250 and as time progressed various derivative were produced including the /3 the command version of which this is the subject of this article.
This Tamiya kit was produced in1979 and was chosen for a club competition for any subject pre-1990. The kit comes in a tan plastic with four figures one of which depicts General Rommel in leather overcoat. The parts are nicely moulded for the age of the kit with some mould seams but nothing major. It was decided at the outset that this would be an out of the box build with no additions, a hard ask for me.
The instructions begin with the assembly of the wheel which is very straightforward. The lower hull is of the tub type and the wheels were then attached to the relevant axles/swing arms. The tracks are made up of link and length pies and were made up with Tamiya Extra Thin Cement, when allowed to cure for a short time were draper over the wheels and fixed in place with the adhesive. The kit has a fairly crude engine but when built up it would suffice and at this time the front axle assembly was built and fitted.
