Tiger I schwere Panzerabteilung 503.

[SoC]

Hi, today I show my painted Rubicon Tiger I '311' (Leutnant von Rosen) of schwere Panzerabteilung 503. In Normandy Von Rosen was commander of the 1st platoon/3rd company. Later in war he fought in Hungary and at the Eastern Front with a Tiger II.

The tank commander is from Perry miniatures. Zimmerit is done by myself.

"The 1st platoon commander Lieutenant von Rosen's Tiger. On 11th July 1944, he attacked to the north-west of Giberville with his platoon, destroying four anti-tanks guns and 12 Shermans, including several Fireflies. Von Rosen, without his radio, damaged from the beginning of the action, directed operations from his cupola, capturing two Shermans abandoned by their crews."
(Tiger I in action 1942-1945, Jean Restayn)






Cheers
Stefan

[Rubicon Models]

Nicely done indeed!  Thank you for posting, Stefan!

 

[Pinky]

Nice work!  Especially the Zimmerit.

Warlord's late Tiger I is just about to be released - it will be interesting to compare it to Rubicon's.  Warlord have screwed up their Tiger's box art - feels like they're struggling to match Rubicon's excellent box art...

[Preda]

At least on the pitcures posted by WL the Zimmerit on there Tiger looks like made with a ruler .......

[Rubicon Models]

There is one reason why we don't put Zimmerit on ours "yet".  Need to do it RIGHT, otherwise, will look terrible; especially on such a small scale!  We think gamers will not care much if the Zimmerit looks good or bad, but we do have our production standard!  We have done a lot of research on Zimmerit... from historical facts to Zimmerit patterns!

Probably most people knew Zimmerit was applied to selected German tanks between Dec 43 and Sep 9, 44, a total of NINE months!  Out of these nine months, there are a good number of tanks with Zimmerit BUT not to the point all late war tanks have them!  Also, out of these nine months, NOT ALL tanks being produced within this period had Zimmerit!

The use of Zimmerit is blown out of proportion because there is a lot of modelers presented their models (particularly in 1/35 scale) with Zimmerit, we thought there might be more plastic German model tanks with Zimmerit than their real counterpart.

A a brief statistic on German tank production between Dec 43 and Aug 44, and even if we assume all German tanks produced with this nine month period had Zimmerit, you can see that...

Panzer IV Ausf F2 to J - 9 months - around 2,000 tanks with Zimmerit being produced out of the 7,400 in total - 27%
Panther Ausf A - 5 months - around 1,200 with Zimmerit out of the 2,200 being produced - 54%
Panther Ausf G - 6 months - around 1,000 with Zimmerit out of the 2,950 being produced - 34%
Tiger I Ausf E - 8 months - around 600 with Zimmerit out of the 1,355 being produced - 44%
Tiger II - 3 months - no more than 95 with Zimmerit out the 492 being produced - 19%

The above figures are rough estimates, actual numbers need to be further studied.

We are not debunking the presence of Zimmerit on German tanks, but the numbers are not to the point where you will see them everywhere.  During the late war period, the German had produced a total of around 35,000 armoured fighting vehicles (tracked).  A total of less than 7,000 would have Zimmerit... around 20% in total! Of course, these number still need to be clarified but we are just trying to show our point...

[zigoR]

good job mate 

[Pinky]

I think the real reason Zimmerit is important is because of the popularity of the period in which it was common on Panzers - especially the Normandy campaign, which seems to dominate WW2 wargaming. 

The Zimmerit on Warlord's Panther is pretty good, but obviously it's too clean and neat.  In reality it was often quite rough.  I think SoC has captured the look of it well.  Warlord's Tiger looks okay in the photos, but their box art shows an early Tiger with Zimmerit, when the model is clearly a late version. Very odd…

Interesting fact - the Western Allies initially thought that Zimmerit was intended to asset with camouflage.  It had the (unintended) effect of helping Panzers blend in with terrain, and also negated sunlight reflecting off the paint and giving away the tank's position.

[ripley]

Also Zim came in about 5 or 6 different patterns , depending on the vehicle ( Panthers , Tigers , and Stugs ) as well as the factory that applied it . All three Panther factories had their own pattern , the Stugs had at least 3 patterns and some Tiger Is had one pattern on the hull and a different one on the turret . Like most things WW II German , there's lots of variables so , though you might get it wrong sometimes , you also will  get it  right  once in a while .

[sam034]

Its a really nice modle and very well painted, I was wondering how to do the fading on camo paterns myself all preverios experiments on it for myself have gone fairly badly?

[olsianon]

Very good panzerpaintjob 
CHEERS!

[SoC]

In combat






Cheers Stefan