The Krupp-Steyr Waffenträger in resin

[ultravanillasmurf]

Here is the gunner tucked under the gun.




I cannot get the loader in place.

[ripley]

Do you have any of the Rubicon figures from their Half Track add on kits , They should be slim enough to fit if you place their chest toward the gun breech , just adjust the head to be sort of looking forward .  You could also just build up a rectanguler shaped box , round both sides of one end ( for  shoulders ) and add a spare head , from a top view  it will look like a crew man . I managed to get a commander in the BA T-34/85 hatch . He's just a couple of short pieces of plastic strip , the top one shorter than the bottom one , giving the  idea of a  shoulder  , than added an arm and head



In your turret the loader would be as far to the rear as possible , that L71 gun had long ammo , you could notch a plastic upper torso so it fits partly over the interior turret race . This thing would have been used as a long range sniper , big hard hitting gun , very light armor a lot like a supersized Hellcat , doing the old shoot and scoot  probably the commander would have been out of the turret  looking for victims ,and places to move the vehicle to set up the next ambush . Have no idea why the pictures show the gun with that high elevation , its an anti tank gun not a howitzer . Of coarse  they could have planned to mount both guns in the vehicle model  like the Nashorn / Hummel

[ultravanillasmurf]

If it's  going to be a late war " 47 " type vehicle , how about borrowing the urban cammo used on the Berlin Chieftains ?

I did wonder about a Mondrian pattern (somewhere I have a 1/60 scale Brocken military Labor(sic)  armed with a 105mm MG42 in a Mondrian pattern camo).

I wondered about an Ambush camo with a grey and brown palette.

[Ballardian]

 Many thanks UVS & Ripley, it doesn't look like the gunner is too much of a challenge to fit in - the loader however... It's possible that I'll go with something akin to Ripley's suggestion -  possibly a figure cut down to head, shoulders & upper torso (since you won't see much else anyway). The loaders position in this vehicle looks like a nightmare anyway (as is demonstrated on the Trumpeter kit).







 Or there's the Heer 46 approach with the crew exposed - I think this is the 15mm version.




The Berlin Brigade pattern urban camo could look interesting, I've seen a Trumpeter E-100 Ausf B done in a similar way -

[ripley]

I get the feeling the crew wouldn't end up in a "Fury vs Tiger " like firefight , more the long distance sniper kind of thing . Lots of time for the loader to man handle those large rounds . This thing wouldn't be a 6 rounds a minute kind of gun at all . maybe 1 a minute , what do you think ?

[ultravanillasmurf]

Definitely shoot and scoot.

The hull is likely to have minimum armour - for Bolt Action/Konflikt 47 at best Armoured Carrier (7+).

[Ballardian]

 Indeed, I doubt either the hull or turret would have been proof against anything more than small arms & shell splinters (maybe a .50 cal?) The Germans however had plenty of experience of thinly armoured tank hunters (pretty much all the PanzerJaegers/Marders based on Pz I, II & 38t chassis coudn't field more than about 30mm & the fighting compartment of the Hornisse/Nashorn was also thinly armoured). So shoot & scoot would pretty much sum it up - it'd be a foolish crew who mistook their mount for a tank.
 Interestingly, utilising the potentially long effective range of the PaK 43 would have been a bit trickier in real life - the British & US records show quite clearly that the vast majority of kills on their vehicles occurred at ranges less than 400m - well inside effective response range of pretty much anything (the 1km+ shots seem to have been vanishingly rare). This is explainable once you consider the terrain - rises & dips in the land, trees, hills & buildings all conspire to seriously restict line of site, the Normandy campaign is full of incidences of tanks bursting through hedgerows, or round corners only to find themselves facing the enemy at 2-300m or even less.

[ultravanillasmurf]

The kit above shows two sights, one through the front of the turret, the other periscopic.

Certainly going to need to be careful about mixing of interior detail and crew.

[Ballardian]

 Made a little progress on crewing the Waffentrager - I went for a fairly low-tech solution. The crew's bodies are Rubicon (the gunner's is from the 250/251 20mm turret kit, with the head from a WG/Italeri tanker - its facial detail was better, while the loader was a left over from an SdKfz 3 kit).
 


Rather than build the crew seats (I did think about it - having some left over from the same 250/251 conversion kit) I attached the crew models to the recoil guard - they each have a small piece of square section plastic rod stuck to their laps as a spacer so they sit at the right height, with a pin through it to attach them to the guard (they're currently held on with blu-tak so I can paint them seperately.
Then there's the issue of how much to detail the inside of the turret - given the fairly small apature you can't see very much, so I felt that I could get by with basic representations of the turret clutter. There's a radio on the left behind the gunner, with a cylindrical canister above it, while on the back wall you can see a storage box with a fire extinguisher above it - I'll probably pretty much leave it at that, perhaps adding a pack & an MP40.

[ripley]

Looking really good .Putting Lots of detail in a very little space , fun huh ? I believe the canister above the radio should be a German gas mask case . All their tanks and armored cars  had them fitted in specific spots beside  the crew positions  till the end of the war . It makes it easy to identify most stuff inside WW2 German AFVs , as the holders were all the same in most vehicles , gas mask rack in Tiger , same size/shape in Panzer II & 222  Armored Car  for example . If you have room , there should be a canister , verticle in front by the gunner , it holds the  sight when not in use   .

[Ballardian]

 Cheers Ripley, it is quite enjoyable to do, though I did have to occasionally remind myself to stick to what would be visible & not fall down a detailing rabbit hole.
 & just to prove that it all fits....

[ultravanillasmurf]

Nice job.

Good idea on fixing the crew to the breech.

Is that a release on the right side of the breech?

[Ballardian]

Cheers UVS, fixing them to the recoil guard seemed like the easiest way. Yes that's the breech release, I realise it's a bit thick, but it was the nearest to right size plastic rod I had lying around - I might try & put a little ball of green stuff on the end of it to make it look more lever-y.

[ripley]

Coming along nicely . Good idea of putting the hanging tarp on the rear of the turret