I knew i had seen that somewhere, thanks for jogging the memory. Might be worth me getting it shipped over, it £20 in Hannants.
I will leave the scratching to you Hans, i wouldn’t even attempt it
Well, back in the day, it was scratch-build it or fergit it… After-market parts and mods were and expensive, and really un-reachable for the age I was anyway, when mowing 5 lawns and a paper route netted around 30 bucks a month… I got good at scrounging and scratching though, and have never seen the need to progress much farther than what I’d been doing all along… I put the money into tools like the Dremel, vacuform machine, soldering irons, casting materials, that kind of stuff… Add to it that there were no hobby shops, in the sense we have now, anywhere within biking distance… More like a 2-hour drive, y’know… Kits came from five & dime, grocery, drug, and hardware stores… Had to wait for Mom & Dad to head for the “big city” once a month to get to a dime store anyway… My hometown had a grocery store and a drug store, and that’s where we got kits an’ paint (Testor’s and Practa 'Namel only)… I do buy some AM stuff here & there to use for masters though…
I’ve just never gotten into doing it any differently, both creatively and financially… I’m a tightwad and I fear change, lol…
For at least the last several years, the “ersatz M10 Panther” has been a “secret tank” release scheduled to be released by Dragon.
I’m still waitin’…[sigh]
Here’s something you may be able to use that old Tamiya panther for[:-^]
Scratch away Hans![;)]
Where in the the crap did you find that!
Its a photo from the 60’s-70’s of a french construction company’s crane. There has been alot of discussion about this photo and every now and then it makes an appearance to create a buzz.
After the war the French had quite a few surrendered or captured panthers. The 503e Régiment de Chars de Combat had 50 in their ranks and they were operational till about 1950 when they were replaced with the ARL 44 tank.
This is kind of unique and almost an ironic and fitting end to a destructive weapon. To rebuild France. As much as the photo pops up, I’ve yet to see anyone scratch build this vehicle.
Thanks for the info renarts.
I found the pic a little while ago. Everything was written in Czech so I didn’t have a lot to go on.
Talking about the Panther mounted crane, a friend of mine’s family logging business in Northern Idaho during the 1980’s had 4 Shermans mounted with cranes and grapple hooks which they used to skid logs and load trucks.
scratched this from DML panther G smartie.
Did you vac-form the glacis plate and turret facades from a form or is it all sheet construction? Also, did you modify the final drive cover from a Sherman or similar part or was it shaped in some other way?
I got a big bag of spare model parts from ebay, including some allies final drive housings. The one I used was green, not sure what it was intended for, but it was too narrow so I had to cut it into halves, fill the middle and sand it down.
Skirts were sheet constructions. Sidings on the turret were replicas of parts from accurate armour conversion set, a friend was kind enough to let me cast them, but unfortunately he had the hull parts installed already. So front and back plating came from my old printer.
It’s a real beaut, I’ll say…
Hans,
after looking at the photos of the ersatz M-10 enlarged under windows viewer, it looks like the Germans didn’t use a Sherman front cover for the front of the Panther. It looks like they used curved, welded and boxed sections of steel plate to make it look like a Sherman cover from a distance. I think the attack was ordered by Hitler in the middle of Sept. or Oct. '44 which wouldn’t leave much time to modify the tanks to be ready to move up into position by the second week of Dec. Anyhow, there was a diorama in FSM about 2 years ago with the subject being the modification of a Panther into the Pan-10. It might give you a good idea what the front looks like.
Is there any evidence the tanks were modified specifically for battle of bulge?
It could of been a decision to use an already existing unit. They were knocked out quickly because they were used in attacks, where American troops knew everything coming from that direction were enemies. It could of worked better if they were deployed during a German retreat.
