RoE Hobby Hitler Youth Anti Tank

Ok then finally the tank.  The first thing that I need to explain on the tank front is its origins.  As I’ve said this all began because I wanted to paint the new figures and then the idea developed.  The tank was actually given to me by a lovely lady over at Warlord Games.  It’s actually a miscast, they have a few of these knocking about and after a chat with Rachel this one came home with me.  The issues with the tank were fairly slight to be honest, there were a few air bubbles across the model and the decking at the rear has a slight dip.  Well the air bubbles were filled with green stuff with the exception of one on the side of the turret, the rear deck was left as was, clearly battle damaged!!  The other bits to consider were that the tank didn’t have any hatches, front MG or main gun.  Again these were easily sorted, I used a small piece of brass rod for the gun, correct length (well same as the one from Warlord) just slightly thicker at the end of the barrel as the actual gun tapers slightly, there’s less than 0.5mm difference between my one and the actual one, I’ve checked it with callipers!!  The hatches were sorted with plasticard and green stuff.  This is one of the areas that has caused a bit of a stir, “the hatch is all wrong”.  When I photographed the tank with the front hatch on the green stuff had literally been blobbed on in to the area and was starting to cure before I resized it.  I didn’t even consider it to be honest, I was running out of light and wanted to get the pic done and move on.  After I had taken the pics I altered the size to match the photo’s I’d been using for reference.  I think that is now much clearer in the next pics.  Now the MG, ah joy of joys.  The majority of pics I’d looked at showed a really small barrel end showing on the hull MG, I created the rounded mount part from green stuff and then had a dig round through my various DIY tools and stuff for a small nail about the right thickness.  I found one, rather than put it in place with tweezers etc I put it in place with the nail head intact.  Made it much easier for me to position, once the glue was dry and I was further into the painting process I trimmed the nail down to the correct size, losing the “plunger” that has caused such an outcry.  Finally back to the hole in the side of the turret.  I had decided that the tank was going to have a “Panzerfaust” hit on the turret.  So I started digging around for pictures of tanks, or anything really with Faust hits.  I found a really interesting article with some pics of steel plates which had been hit with captured fausts by the U.S. military.  The most interesting thing was the size and type of hole.  The hole was really quite small, and the damage around it quite limited, although it did have an interesting circular pattern.

I wasn’t sure if the plate in the pic had been cleaned up for examination etc It looks like the circular patterns around the point of impact have been caused by intense heat.  I put a thin coating of super glue on the turret around the hole I had left and then carefully marked it in a similar way as the steel plate.  Once the superglue dried it would leave a mark on the turret in a similar way as to the marks in the picture.  The area in front of the hole in the turret also looked like it had been smashed and scraped, possibly driven through a building etc; I would look at that again when it came to the painting stage.

I had spray undercoated the whole tank with black initially.  I then covered the tracks with masking tape.  That way when I painted the hull etc I wouldn’t get green all over the tracks and have to paint them again.  I then painted the whole tank with a mix of Russian Uniform and Luftwaffe Camo Green, about 50/50.  I wanted the base colour to be quite a dark green.

After that had dried I washed the entire tank with Dark tone.

I then dry brushed the tank with first the base colour and then progressively lighter coats of a mix with less and less Luftwaffe Camo Green until the final colour was pure Russian Uniform.  My advice for this stage is to be very very light with the amount of paint on the brush and use a large specialist dry brush.  Take the majority of the paint off the brush, if you have to do a couple of really light coats that’s much better than putting too much paint on.  I concentrated the paint on the highest areas of the tanks hull.

After that I removed the tape from the tracks and painted the wheels in the same way, making sure I did one side at a time and left the tank standing on its side when inking the wheels so that the ink pools evenly rather than just at the bottom, doing it this way looks best but takes time.  I gave the tracks a really light and careful dry brush of Gunmetal.  Once that had dried I gave the entire lot the lightest possible dusting of Iraqi Sand.  When doing this final stage remove all the paint from your brush on a piece of kitchen cloth/paper towel etc.  Then test the brush on something else, piece of tile etc, you’ll be surprised how much paint is still left on the brush.  Then carefully dry brush the tank, again focus on higher areas.

Finally I added the wear and tear and weathering.  Around the hole in the turret I carefully dabbed on a light coating of black.  I had decided that the amount of heat needed to cause the damage would have to leave some kind of scorch mark; I exaggerated it for visual effect.  The damaged areas were painted carefully with a mix of German Grey and black and then had Gunmetal applied around the edges.  I applied a series of “scratches” in the same way around parts of the hull and turret and on handles etc.  Below each of these types of marks I painted a really thin line of Khaki; it helped to focus the attention to the scratches and added depth.

Across the hull, around the scratches and other protrusions I painted a really watered down mix of Terracotta and Lava Orange, I wanted this to look like rust.  I painted the rust to look like it was running down sloped and vertical areas.  Finally I applied the same brick dust that I had used on the bases to the tanks hull and tracks.  I scooped the dust up with a medium paint brush and the “tapped” it into place, brushing the loose parts in to deeper cracks etc.

After all that had dried I gave the tank and all the figures and base a good varnish with Testors Dull Coat for extra protection.  I intend to game with these models as well as look at them.

So there you go.  Overall I’m really pleased with the finished piece.