1:72 Sd.Kfz. 144, Panzerjäger III fuer 7.5 cm PaK 40/2 (‚Marder IV‘); vehicle ‘435’ of the 4. Kompanie, Panzerjäger-Abteilung 616; Baranów (Powiat Kępiński/Poland), late 1944 (What-if/modified Revell kit) - WiP

            The kit and its assembly:
This project was the result of a surplus 1:72 Revell Flakpanzer III "Ostwind" kit that I had in my stash after I had used the gun and the octagonal turret for a Panther conversion with twin 3.7 cm FlaK guns in an open turret. And even though the Ostwind kit was still buildable as a standard Panzer III (it includes a complete standard turret), I wanted to create something whiffy from it. An SPG was a serious option, maybe a tank hunter (since there was, apart from the StuG III with the long gun no such vehicle on this chassis), and then I remembered the Marder family of converted, outdated tanks - all of them had open superstructures, though and were only lightly armored, for hit.and-run tactics.

But I accepted this challenge and the plan was to mount a PaK 40 on the Panzer III chassis, with a new, scratched superstructure. The gun came from an Italeri set with infantry weapons, which also includes a 37 mm Pak and a quadruple 20 mm anti-aircraft gun. Initially I wanted to use the PaK 40's shield and build the combat compartment around it, but that soon turned out to be too complex, so that the gun just fired through a hole in the font plate, protected by an externa shield left over from an Elefant SPAAG (Trumpeter kit). The rest was inspired by the cabin of the Marder III (Ausf. H), with sloped side walls that widened the combat section beyond the lower hull between the tracks. Unlike the Marder III, however, the Panzer III offered enough space to mount a rear wall, offering better crew protection.

Work started with the lower hull, with a raised floor (above the torsion bar suspension), new side walls and a tunnel for the cardan shaft from the engine to the driver wheels at the front - which seriously eats up lots of space and prevents a low mounting position for the main gun! Then the floors of the alcoves left and right were added and the side walls mounted to them. The front was the final challenge - after the gun position had been decided, I tried to build the front armore from segments around the necessary opening, which tunred out to be more complex than expected. But the Elefant front panel came to the rescue, I just had to cut the gun barrel to mount the matching shield and finally attach it to the gun inside of the hull.

The rest from the kit was taken OOB, I just added a driver seat inside and replaced the original segmented plastic tracks with aftermarket Panzer III/IV vinyl tracks from CMK - they match perfectly and are much easier to mount than a zillion of single track links that never look right...

Taken on: April 16, 2022

Tags:

1:72

tank

wwii

marder

pak

75mm

dunkelgelb

olivgrün

ral

6003

7028

poland

1944

spg

fictional

vehicle

sdkfz

144

modellbau

whif

what-if

dizzyfugu

revell

kit

conversion

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