Next up in the Resin Tiger Trio, Tiger 131, the most famous Tiger in the world! Or so the Tank Museum at Bovingdon would have you believe. Well, it is a star of film and screen and gets to motor around outside, sometimes.
Anyway, here it is in all its Tunisia camo glory. This one has an early pattern chassis, air filters and turret, but a mid production turret bin, just like the Bovingdon one. Originally it was knocked out and captured in fairly good condition before being ferried back to the UK for examination. In recent decades it has been restored to working condition at the Tank Museum.
The original was painted in a very unusal colour scheme, a brownish sand and an olive grey/green (I can't recall the RAL numbers, but 1/35th scale modelling sites will give all the gory details). The green here is mixed up from Humbrol Army Green and VJ Middlestone and is a decent match for the Tank Museum colour. I haven't got the base colour quite right, it should be a bit browner but it is OK. It is essentially VJ Desert Sand with a bit of Khaki mixed in but at a scale distance it isn't bad.
Like the Grey Tiger this also got a pinwash around all the raised parts. I did the fire extinguisher grey on this one for contrast. The turret numbers on the real one are plain red, so I hand painted those. I did the basic outline with a Posca Paint Pen, then went over them with red paint and a fine brush.
The tracks and running gear got a lighter colour mud coating than the other one, and again I picked out the tyres on the wheels. I did the same trick as the other one with the left hand hull balkan cross and stuck it on over the the tow cable, then painted the cable on top of the decal.
This finally got a very light drybrush of VJ Pale Sand, which was enough to dirty it up a bit and pick out the highlights. That will do nicely for Tunisia, and will no doubt see action in Sicily, Italy and Russia too.
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