Small Scale Military Headquarters

Hi, I'm considering buying my first Tiger tank, or first German tank ever. I was looking at an eastern front camo one from 2000-2001 era. Do you guys think that it could work in a Normandy diorama, or is it strictly for fighting Russkies? I am more interested in the fighting in France so I'd like to know.

Unless your a die-by-the-book sorta guy, I would say go ahead and get the Tiger you want.

As an excuse you could say this Tiger was transferred from a unit in Russia to the hedgerows of France to hold back the Allied invasion.

yeah, I like to be realistic, but not over-the-top perfect accuracy. So I think I'm going for the eastern camo Tiger like I originally wanted. Anyways, the german paints and camos varied alot

you could get the Bravo Team Tiger. It's cheaper, has zimmerit, which is more accurate than the 21c tanks and its paint scheme is from the Normandy area.

Here's a shot of the Bravo Team Tiger to help you with a visual:



It's a really nice tank and less expensive as Aferguson mentioned. I like the camo colors myself.

To me the colors are eastern fronty... The eastern front tiger from 21st will work in normandy too.

thanks guys, what is zimmerit? I actually bought the 21st tiger off ebay before I got most of your comments. Yay I got it for $70.00 MIB w/commander including shipping!

I was going to bid on that. xD I forgot about it though.

lolz xD

Here is one I had on my watch list as a backup plan if the first tiger didn't work out:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 711wt_1189

AJWW2 wrote:thanks guys, what is zimmerit? I actually bought the 21st tiger off ebay before I got most of your comments. Yay I got it for $70.00 MIB w/commander including shipping!

?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmerit

Thanks a lot, Pickel. I kind of like the Zimmerit on the FOV tiger, I'll probably get with 1-2 of them sometime in the future.

A Tiger stationed in the Western Front in 1944 should have Zimmeritt, which would make the Bravo Team Tiger correct in terms of tooling. The Bravo Team Tiger's unit also carries unit markings of SS Panzer-Abteilung 101, which was at Normandy. Another good fit. The only thing thats off is really the paint scheme - its a bit too Eastern-Front-looking with the tan and brown.

I always felt the JSI Tiger, in terms of its paint scheme, worked best for the "Normandy" look. The JSI tiger comes with no markings or insignia, so you will have to track down decals to put on it... The 21c "Eastern Front Cammo" Tiger is in the markings of a tank from the 502 heavy tank battalion, which served on the Eastern Front. The cammo could work in a Normandy context, but the unit markings wouldn't.

Zimmerit was a coating produced for German armored fighting vehicles for to guard against magnetically attached anti-tank mines. It was created by Chemische Werke Zimmer AG and produced from December 1943 to 9 September 1944 and discontinued from field application on 7 October 1944. The Germans stopped using it as it tended to catch fire from projectile impacts...

there were plenty of tan and brown german vehciles in France in '44. The camo on the bravo team tiger is fine.

The 21c tiger you bought is ideal for a Kursk tiger, except for the steel wheels (nothing is perfect in life, no?)...lol. However, in this 1/18 scale hobby, you learn to fudge things most of the time and either tiger is fine (but neither is perfect) for Normandy too.

Do yourself a favour and get a bravo team tiger at some point. It's not as detailed as the 21c but the zimmerit alone is worth the price. I've got 3 now and am lovin' them.

thank you aferg, a FOV Tiger is definitely in my future. The reason I wanted the 21st tiger is because of the opening hatches/detail.

P.S. my name is Andrew as well

AJWW2, welcome. You can get the FOV Tiger at a good price, here's one.....http://smalljoes.com/cgi-bin/pgen.cgi?S ... FOVBT70004
I recently ordered 2 more for custom projects.

thanks normandy, I probably will order one from Smalljoes when I decide to.

The JSI would have been also a good choice for a Normandy diorama.But i have to admit that i like the one you pick up.The forces of valor tank has a nice stance compared to the 21st century one.I found out that the tracks are slightly wider by a couple of millimeters and the side fenders don't stick out too much so they look more in parallel with the tracks.All this combine with the zimmerit gives the tank a more rugged look.The down is that it only open two hatches,tools are molded and the color .

As far as I can find, with the possible exception of 5 vehicles issued to Panzer Lehr, all the Tiger I deployed into Normandy were with one of three tank battalions;

Schwere Heers Pz Abt 503, Schwere SS Pz Abt 101, Schwere SS Pz abt 102.

All the references I have indicate that the three units painted their vehicles into three colour camoflage, SS101 and Heers503 using a mottled effect of the two camo colours over the base yellow, while SS102 used large patches of green and brown leaving wavy lines of the dark yellow basecoat showing.

Happy to be corrected, but that's what I've read today.

Also they were all mid or late production vehicles so would have zimmerit. - Which also means there were no new construction steel wheel Tigers (the late production) without zimmerit.

I think it's been pointed out elsewhere that all the 1/18 Tiger models are a case of mix and match in terms of production features, so none are exactly accurate 'out of the box' but at the end of the day, it's your model, and it's up to you.


All the best

Sam

The 21c tiger you bought is ideal for a Kursk tiger, except for the steel wheels (nothing is perfect in life, no?)...lol. However, in this 1/18 scale hobby, you learn to fudge things most of the time and either tiger is fine (but neither is perfect) for Normandy too.

Which Tiger is this? They gray one?

no the three colour one. It was right before Kursk that the germans changed to the 3 colour system for their vehicles but they hadn't started using zimmerit yet....that didn't begin til the fall of '43.

I'm usually too lazy to do much about small non-realistic things. So I'm just gonna leave it and make a few Normandy dios, it still look really cool.