More replacement early war panzers, this time the 'medium' company of which most panzer battalions had one until 1943. Generally two or three platoons of Pz IV and a platoon of Pz II until the TOE was revised.
Two Panzer IVs and a Panzer II. Models all from Battlefield 3D.
A plain grey Panzer II F with the open hatch option and a PSC tank commander. I've decided 3rd company wil have plain white numbers and this is number 33.
A Panzer IV D with the very characteristic stepped hull front, short barrelled 75mm gun and the aerial deflector rod under it. A nice model with just two parts, hull and turret. Most of the stowage is moulded on already.
A fairly plain engine deck with spare wheels on either side.
Nice track droop moulded on, lovely tracks on all the models actually. The jerrycan rack is moulded on. Just number 3 on this one, and plain grey. I just couldn't bring myself to paint a Panzer IV in grey and brown. It was an absolute pig to get that balkan cross in, I had to cut it to fit around the stowage.
Yes, I did paint all the tyres on the road wheels. Although the effect is subtle, it does make a difference. At some point I'll go back and do all the desert German tanks tyres, which will be a big job.
The other one is a Panzer IV E, which shares much with the D but is more heavily armoured. You can just see the plate clumsily welded across the drivers compartment which overhangs the hull front step to protect that section too. Unfortunately the model shares a lot of elements of the Pz IV D, particularly the very distinctive jerrycan rack, so at first glance they look very similar although it does have spare track on the lower front hull.
The engine deck is very different to the D though, with air grilles instead of plain hatches. Number 12 on the turret bin, perhaps the company CO has decided to number the tanks sequentially (typically they had three platoons of four Pz IV in the medium companies, plus a platoon of Pz II).
Slightly different arrangement of vision ports on the turret but otherwise looking very similar to the D. Same problem with the cross as on the D, thanks to that little box moulded onto the hull.
Both the Pz IV were two piece prints, just the hull and turret with the tracks moulded on, which is why the drive and idler wheels are a bit more clumsy than on the Pz IIIs.
The vehicle on the left is what they are replacing, my old Peter Pig Panzer IVs, which I think is an F1 looking at the exhaust. A perfectly decent model and fine size-wise, just a bit crude compared to newer ones.
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