THe other day i was thumbing thru another military magizine from europe, and i was checking out the weathering done to Tiger 1’s. Fenders missing, heavy paint chipping, massive weathering.
SO i turned to my resourses, tigers on the easter front, tigers on the western front, and about 5 others. THe weathering was not evident. Fenders were all in place, even on knocked out or scuttled vechicals.
So here is what i was thinking. Tigers were never very numerious, and they never lasted very long (ie mechicanical failure, aircraft interdiction, or combat knock out) so their weathering should be more subtle. If somone out there has found or has see the date of the oldest tiger that was in service i wold love to see it. However these crews took really good care of their vechicals, and they were a source of pride. One local solider who served in the german army during WW2 told me that they may get a verbal reprimand for a uniform out of sorts, however thier equipment better be perfect.
So what do you think, am i off my rocker?? LOL
Bill
No most Tigers didn’t last very long, and the amount of weathering you see on some models is just too much.
However if you go through books like “Tigers in combat vol 1 & 2” you will find pictures of Tiger with knocked of fenders. A whitewash would considerably more weathered because the whitewash wore quickly.
We also have to consider the fact that most pictures are black and white and that the amount of weathering can be hard to determin.
But still some modelers overdo the weathering on Tigers and other panzers from WWII.
I seem to remember a thread kinda like this about rust on tracks. I’ve seem ref photos on many types that range from almost pristeen to covered in mud to the driver’s hatch. Personally I enjoy weathering because I usually put my builds into some type of small dio or vig.Also you figure even if the Tigers were few what ever picts are out there they represent only a fraction of time. Also even if the soldiers did have pride in the vehicles, the Germans especially were limited in resourses later in the war to anything but essential repairs. I think any weathering or damage is appropriate to combat vehicles if that’s the way you want to go.Also if you want a more subdued effect that’s cool too. Here is a pict. of a Tiger that’s been around.
IMO, unless a modeler is building a model of a specific vehicle from a specific moment in history, weathering and damage should be up to the modeler. It is after all a hobby and sometimes I do like seeing a model of a “worn out” vehicle. I have tried to portray a heavily weathered vehicle but my attempts end up looking goofy. A heavily weathered model doesn’t bother me as much as someone selling a kit as pro built with obvious glue marks and seams not filled. Just my [2c] worth. I look forward to other opinions.
Sideline, could you date the pic for me Stug61, its a perfect dio?
JohanT, it is mid April, 1944. A Tiger I Ausf. E of the Schwere Heeres Panzer Abteiling 507 near Tarnopol just after the capture of the city.
Bill,
No, I don’t think you are off your rocker… Especailly late in the war, Many tanks were sent from the factory to the battlefield and almost immediately lost… I have seen some Tiger Is that had seen service for a long period of time and were pretty extensively beatup, but for the most part, I think the reason the German tanks look so “used up” is that most had zimmerit which was rough looking or were taken during muddy periods that look even worse in B/W photos… I almost never do extreme weathering because for the most part, it didn’t happen…[;)]
I agree with Panther18, most of the tigers were in fact rushed to the front and then destroyed very soon after issue.
now I do like a lot of weathering on panzer i,2, 3s,4s and halftracks too,now those were easily abused but also easily repaired.
Thx Andy 
At a recent model club meeting, an ex-SS commander said that they would always keep the rust oftheir tools and the tank its self. Rust greatly weakened the armor, so all precatiouns were made to get rid of it. keep this in mind.
Hi guys,I have to disagree…
Many many Tigers lasted a good time indeed…many were rebuilt and many were recovered and repaired often…if you look thru the various books by Jentz ect…you can see that many lasted a good time with their units…there were even Tiger 1s fighting in Berlin,many many months after the production was stopped…
i gotta agree with kaleu, i dont really build specific vehicles from certain time periods and units, but either way i do a little bit of a wash and such just to bring out some detail, thats what makes modeling a great hobby, your own imagination is the limit really. thats just my 2 cents for what its worth.
Is that what it says in the book ?? hmmm strange, I haven’t seen this pic before so it can’t be published that many places, is it from “the combat history of Shwere panzer abteilung 507” ??
That is one of the most strange Tiger I’s I have seen. I almost corrected you and said that it was an ausf. H1 and not an E. because it has the early tracks, but then I looked at the turret and saw that it had the turret exhaust fan in the middle of the turret … very strange.
I have to disagree
if you look in the Tankpower books, Concord books, Tigers in Combat 1 and 2, Germanys tiger tanks by Jentz and Doyle you will see lots of photos of tigers in a bad way,
in Tigers in the mud by Otto Carius, Panzer Aces 1 and 2, and Panzer battle of the waffen SS by Will Fey there are acounts of Panzers being hit by morters and straffed by aircraft and surviving
is the military magizine from europe was it the Tiger 1 with number F13 with early drum cupola and steel wheels? well that lasted till 11 April 1945 was the mag AFV Modeller (is this classed as a direct competeter to FSM? sorry if it is)
I think we see a trend on all sites. The trend nowadays is, if it is German WWll armor, it needs to be “beat up”, otherwise it’s not a finished model. Virtually everytime you post a Tiger that is moderately weathered, you get the inevitable criticisms “Where is the rust?”, “why aren’t the fenders crushed”, “needs more battle damage”, etc…
People get “conditioned” to what they see repetitvely. If a Tiger gets rave reviews on some site, and it has tracks that are fully rusted, well then that’s the way they all should be, or so goes the trend. I believe that some modelers see this, and repeat it whenever they can as “gospel”. Tanks in the field do receive varying amounts of wear and tear, depending on circumstances. Those of us that know what happens in the field on the real thing, (and by the way, whether it is German, US, British, or Russian it happens to all) understand what “accurate weathering” is. Others must read books and look at pictures and do the best they can to represent thier model as “pictured”.
I agree with the premise of this thread, that most weathering (Tigers?) is overdone, but, if that is the taste of the individual, isn’t that OK?. I feel that some modelers who want to share thier work are somewhat “pressured” into heavy weathering to gain acceptance from thier peers. I agree that many Tigers were put out of service, but, the German Army maintenance teams worked miracles to return recovered vehicles to service, most cases, within 48 hrs.
I think one should do what they want on thier Tiger, and “let it rain”. The uninformed, the ignorant, and the rest will say what they may, but, who cares? It’s just a model. Remember the old saying: “You can’t please everyone, so just please yourself”.
Steve
TMN1, that’s what the book said. It’s from Ian Baxter’s “German Armored Warfare Of WW2: The Unpublished Photograghs 1939-1945” I absolutley love this book. There are hundreds of photos and I think I’ve only seen about 10% anywhere else. It is just a treasure trove of modeling ideas. P.S. Right on Steve!![#ditto] I enjoy seeing anyone’s work, weathered or not. But I like weathering my builds, to me it’s part of the fun. But then again it is all about ME!!![8-]
the same photos in one of the Tankpower books but just says “Emergency fuel was frequently carried in 200 liter drums”
I agree with what Crockett put here,
Ain’t that the truth? There gets to be a sort of state of the art that is often more affectation that representation. The “little orange guys” are an excellent example. You know, those figures whose faces have an orange complexion? That seems to be “the way” to paint figures, largely based on the very influential Verlinden books, but European soldiers are by and large not orange – if you look at Europeans from around 60-100 feet off, they do not glow orange.
But if you try to accurately capture the color you see when you do look at Europeans from around that distance, people consider you an amatuer because you did not produce little orange guys.
Same goes for tanks these days. Your build-up has to be covered with rust and chipped paint or it is, as you are sometimes condescendingly told, a “nice clean build.” Of course, we’ve all seen photos of dirty and/or dusty tanks, but dirt and dust is a different issue. Serious decay of the basic paint job was considered untidy by the Germans and the Germans are a very tidy people. They tried to touch up paint chips and the like whenever they could.
We all have probably also seen the photos of tanks fighting on, say, the steppes of Russia during summer, and these generally look fairly clean.
So I wouldn’t say weathering is going too far, not necessarily, but it certainly does depend on the subject you are modeling. We should change our attitudes about what a good build-up is to recognize that tanks do not have to appear beat up and filthy to be accurate representations.
Seems to me that even if a tank survived the entire duration of WW2, surface rust would not be a problem. Rust on tools is one thing but the majority of armor on any tank was primed and painted. Even if a surfaced was dinged up and the metal started to rust, it is doubtful the rust would have had a great effect on the tank’s armor prior to the tank either being destroyed or replaced by an updated variant.
An exception to this would be the tanks that served in the Pacific Theater. The island hopping, tropical weather, and most importantly, the salty sea water would have made rust a problem for any metal.
I tend to think that the overall trend of what’s been deemed acceptable has gone a bit overboard. Yes, paint chipping happens, and so does mud and dust and dirt. But I’ve seen models that look like they’ve come straight out of the junkyard, and folks rave about the ‘accurate’ weathering and battle damage.
I’m currently building a T-34/85 from the 11th Guards Division in Berlin in 1945. I showed a fellow armor modeler my in-progress, and he replied, 'You need to beat it up some more, you need paint chips and rust and tear one of the fenders off, and dent the fuel tanks. And you need a good coat of mud on the tracks and roadwheels, too." Now, he’s a really good modeler, so I just nodded and left it at that…but it started me thinking…a T-34 has relatively shallow waffle style tracks, and driving a vehicle like that on the paved or cobblestoned streets of Berlin would get rid of most of the mud on the tracks rather quickly, and would probably wear the metal down to a dull sliver on the contact surfaces. There’s no doubt there’d still be residual mud on the hull, but only as a thin layer, not huge gobs. In looking at reference photos of T-34s, I’m not seeing heavy paint chipping, and I’m not seeing as much rust as I’ve come to expect either.
So maybe I’m off my rocker as well.
Jeff