Good morning everyone!
It is certainly good news that Dragon is coming out with a totally new model of this halftrack! I have just acquired their SFH18 howitzer (what a beauty!) and am looking forward very much to matching it up with this halftrack. Does anyong know when it might be coming out?
Also, I would appreciate any advice / info on recent releases of Afrika Korps personnel (with the later fatigue caps and baggy long trousers, not pith helmets and high boots). I already have the Tamiya Afrika Korps kit, which is a little dated now. My idea of a possible diorama for these two machines would be in travel mode, bumping along the road to Tobruk, so personnel seated in the halftrack would be perfect!
Are there any recent releases of suitable baggage items, tarps, jerry cans, etc., for the desert, that could be loaded up on the halftrack?
As always, thanks for any guidance you can give me.
Heia Safari!
DML has announced it but only provided box art…no definite target date set for it. If you don’t want to wait, Trumpeter is also releasing one with a target date of June 2008.
There are surprisingly few sets of suitable figures. I think the problem is that with the Afrika Korps being such an attractive subject, the main players did sets of figures in the 1970s, and then felt no need to re-address the issue. Hence the two Tamiya sets, and the figures which come with the Tamiya 1/35 Pz.II, which, as you note, are really not very good, as well as being unsuitable for what you want. Dragon do two sets:
http://www.dragonmodelsltd.com/html/6138.htm
http://www.dragon-models.com/html/6389p1.htm
some of whom are wearing the long, baggy, trousers, but they’re in combat poses, and, mostly, wearing steel helmets - though it should be easy enough to find suitable Feldmutzen. Other than that, you’re looking at things like the crew figures that come with the Afrika Korps version of their Flak 36. Also, the Tamiya German Machine Gun Crew on Manoevres set (#35184) has five figures, in casual poses, wearing baggy trousers and short boots. Wouldn’t be too difficult to convert/ paint them as Afrika Korps figures. Another source of Afrika Korps figures in relaxed poses is the Italeri 1/35 military Volkswagen Beetle, but most of them are wearing early-war style uniforms.
The old Tamiya Sd.Kfz.7 had, IIRC, several sitting figures, but, IIRC, they’re wearing jackboots.
As to equipment, the Afrika Korps used, for the most part, the same sort of stuff as the Wehrmacht as a whole so, so long as you don’t use items suitable only for 1944-45, any source of standard Wehrmacht stuff shoud do.
Cheers,
Chris.
Also available are Tristar’s Afrika Corps figures;
Plus their Tropical Panzer Crew set.