RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Well Mick, then I will just pretend it is mud/dust on the helmets due to the fact they are hanging/bouncing alongside the tank, haha
Thanks for the pics!

And gotta say, a rusty helmet would be the first thing any half keen sergeant major would be jumping all over...

A good look is to wrap alfoil tightly around a 1/16 scale German helmet and paint it accordingly in a camo colour.
Looks like a cloth cover.

Going to hazard a guess here............

Steel helmets on any tank would have been stowed outside due to space considerations, and the fact that as they would be for use once the crew were forced to dismount & escape or fight on foot, they wouldnt have time to grab a "K-pot" from a less accessible location to put on and carry on the fight.
I would say that outside of any disciplinary protocols, such as presentations, or suchlike, they may have stayed outside for extended periods.
Good chance there may be a bullet hole, certainly a scrape, and covered in dust , but rust?, unlikely I reckon.

All that aside, you've done an honest job of the helmet surface, if a little too accentuated for my eye.
I believe it was fairly common to use a strip of inner tube from a damaged tyre to secure like a rubber band, a section of sheet in winter, or foliage in summer as required.
I have pics of PzIV's in Russia that have a neat row of 5 helmets strung across the rear track length that look immaculate, but there is no way of knowing how long they have been there !
As for a full on winter tank, the preference would have been warmth above all, then helmet availability well down the list.!

Aussie wrote:A good look is to wrap alfoil tightly around a 1/16 scale German helmet and paint it accordingly in a camo colour.
Looks like a cloth cover.

Yip, or toilet tissue soaked in diluted PVA glue and applied so as to replicate the loose fit of a factory made cover, or a rubber band (over tissue) used in teeth braces to look like a band that retains the rough cover.
Or, paint and a rough brush(as is done in this case) to replicate a hard life on the side of a tank !

I've certainly got a picture of a tiger heading to normandy with helmets hanging off the turret track holders..

One thing a lot of guys fail to consider when weathering is the age of the item being weathered at the time of depiction. I like your Tiger, Rob, and can see it as a Tiger One Early at the end of the war in 1945, when it would have been what, three or four years old? Now, if someone tried to present it as a tank in service in 1942 or '43 I might call shenanigans, but for an end of war tank you didn't go too far, and it looks very good. IMHO.

Thank you Max, appreciate it!
It's still in progress, each time I discover other things I would like to change.

Yesterday I took off the 333 decals on the turret.
There has probably been a Tiger 1 with those numbers back then, but not in the type of numbers I had on the turret.
I had planned an other turret number, but the decals were f*cked up, so they were useless.
333 was the only number left i could use.

So now I will paint the turret number on myself.
Been searching the net, for early Tigers on the Eastern front late '44 or early '45 or so.
I found something from the SS Panz.Regiment 2, Das Reich, Ostfront.
They had turret numbers starting with an S, like SO2, S14, S15 in red with white lines.
I also found S45 belonging to a Tiger 1 from the 13th Company, SS Panz.Division LAH, Eastern Front winter 1944
Please do not ask me for the pics, I found most of them on "World War Photos Tiger part 1-2 and 3", with mostly just one line with a subscription of the Tiger.

But I could not find many pics on the internet from Tigers with the S number on their turrets.
Tried several options in Google but not much came up.
I would like something different on my turret then the usual 3 digit numbers.
Anybody on here can point me towards the right direction, so I can paint a correct number on my early Tiger turret, without getting shot here on the forum?

Here are a few without the turret numbers