RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

First we lose the forum for a week then we start back with cat calling!!
Is the other forum out to get us!!
Lets get the forum moving again with good old fashioned questions and (hopefully) helpful answers:

I notice the HL JagdPanther and new Panther have thick drainpipe exhausts, whereas i've also seen much thinner multiple exhausts in pictures. Were these differences peculiar to a type?
Ditto the 'chin' on the gun mantlet?

I'm beginning to whet my appetite for my xmas present to myself - HL Panther

The mantlet chin was to stop incoming shot being deflected down into the hull top.

The JP's exhausts changed during production along with the Panthers.

I think I am right in saying that the Tamiya's are supplied with both the thin multiple and twin thick spark arrestors. I guess that HL kept costs down by supplying just the one variant.

I am in two minds about which ones I prefer??

Rob G

The chin and thick exhausts were only present on the Ausf G I believe. The Ausf A & D also had swivel hatches and no rear crew heater. The A's had the opening vision port, and the D's had the 'letterbox' style MG on the fron rather than the ball.
It depends on what front you want to do a Panther from? The A's & D's were more prominent in Normandy, which is the theatre I know most about.
Hope that helps a bit,
Rik

Were the common componets between the PANTHERS and JAGDPANTHERS produced at the same time? Also were these machines produced at the same factories? And since we are on the subject they are offering PANTHERS in CAMO and GREY so were the colors also the same for the JAGDPANTHERS which are offered in several colors from H/L,what colors were these machines produced in? sax

yup the tamiya is supplied with the thin early exhausts and the later flash surpresion exhausts,

cheers,

Matt

panthers/jagdpanthers were produced by MAN, DAIMLER BENZ, MNH, and HENSCHEL and SOHN, and the panther turret was designed by RHEINMETALL-BORSIG, the main colors used are still open to the modelers discretion, yellow' green' brown' red-brown' and red-oxide primer, there are also rumors of Grey panthers deployed in the final defense of Berlin.

cheers oz.

Speaking of colours of tanks has anyone been watching the programme on Discovery World War 2 in colour. Fridays episode dealt with D Day. Basically all old Black & white footage has been colourised. All the german tanks were grey but you could make out the 2 tone camo patterns including the King Tigers. I dont think the colourists did there reserarch here.

They usually don't do their research very well Case in point, "How to kill a Tiger" deal few years ago. I'm no history scholar, but I do read a great deal, and also, after many years, finally talked to my father on the wars, his and mine.

His statement, and having fought tanks myself I know it's true, was that tanks rarely work alone. If there's a Tiger out there, there's pretty generally gonna be another one or two or three, or some other beast rummaging around that is truly going to ruin your day. Also, you are going to have infantry floating about in the general AO under normal circustances, said infantry probably not being deaf and blind to your approach, and in actual fact may well be irritated no end that you disturbed their afternoon siesta.

The shear folly of what History Channel foisted on the viewing publik was almost comical. "You will loose one Sherman when the Tiger sees you. Then the others fan out and try to hold his attention, while more get behind him. You will loose another holding his attention, and another as you sneak up behind him and shoot him in his thin rear armor to knock him out. So you are going to loose 3 Shermans to get one Tiger" or some foolishness to that effect.

The Old Man, a para, said on more than one occasion he saw Shermans sent out to hunt Tigers (for a long time after D Day, every tank reported on the commo net was a 'Tiger'), and couple hours later you were lucky to see one shot up wreck rattling back in, with a crew that needed a good stiff drink. History Channel seems to think that the Tiger or Panther or Pzkw IV is just gonna sit there phat, dumb, and happy whilst you go thru your "how to kill a Tiger" drill and shoot him up the tail feathers.

The Tigers and Panthers were surely not omnipotent, but they were a whole lot better, albeit a complicated and expensive machine to build and maintain, than anything the Allies on the West Front had. However, what History Channel put on was so far off the mark, you would think they got their show scenario from a Marvel comic book whilst flaunting it about as some scholarly work of art.

And don't get me started on their series, again some years ago, on Napoleon's Second Invasion of Russia. Suffice it to say it was not the winter per se that did in the Grand Armee as the Series stated and tried to show, it was the ill thought of (by the French, although the Armee was a truly international Army, another small detail missed in the Series) Kossaki, the Cossaks, who kept the Armee on the roads and starved it. Napoleans decision to retreat from Mockba along the same road he had taken to Mockba, and his troops had cleaned of just about every edible morsal on the way in, was also not brilliant. As stated, I'm no scholar, but I read...a lot.

Lesson here, gentlemen, is when researching your tank build, research well. No one book, and hardly anything from the Telly, or the Sov side, is going to be true. Check multiple sources on anything you want to do if possible, or just ask on the forum. The best source is the writtings of the actual vets from the respective sides. Find their books, and you will begin to get an insight in to what really happened, what really was built, how well various machines actually worked.

OK, History 101 Class is now out. Pop quiz tomorrow at 09:00. Bring a sharp pencil. Oh yeah, and I haven't watched History Channel for a long long time.