"Kirovograd 1944", Panzergrenadierdivision Grossdeutschland

Grossdeutschland at Kirovograd

The armored infantry division (PzGrenDiv) "Großdeutschland" (GD) fought a delaying action in direction to the DON river in changing weather conditions at the beginning of the year 1944. Persistent resistance could achieve a stabilization in the southern sector of the eastern front. Our small combat team has discovered a tributary of the Ingulez river, which carries an ice cover after a short frost phase again. Unfortunately - probably by partisans - the wooden bridge was blown up.

Therefore the German commander lets check the load-carrying capacity of the ice, before one gets involved in this venture. Some soldiers use this break to have a nip, other ones steal diesel for some unseen vehicles of this combat team from the tank of the mute Russian witness of bygone days.

The Models

 

The Panzer IV Ausf H...

...is an old Tamiya kit (very old: still with electric motor!). Additionally sections of the Pz IV of tool accessory kit of Tamyia were used. The turret and side skirts are self-made out of aluminum sheet metal, including their mounting plates. I had to change and super detail it a lot.

This job comprised the total construction of new side- and turret- skirts including the mounts. I did this by copying the kit items with thin metal sheet and detailing this with nuts and bolts made by the Punch and Die-set from the Historex company, as well as tinkering handles with plastic strips and wire.

The vinyl-tracks were replaced by single-track links for Pz IV mid type from "Dragon". Several improvements were made concerning the tools and surface features:

• The "Zimmerit" - coat was applied with Tamyia-putty (single compound).
• The cleaning device for the gun was made out of hypodermic needles and metal foil.
• Tool-mounts were built by using photo etched "Aber"-parts or lead- and thin metal foil.
• The lay-under-chock got a photo etched "leather" strap and a buckle.
• The springs on the rear- and front fenders were constructed with wire.
• The gutters above the turret side hatches are of bent metal foil.
• All handgrips were replaced by copper wire.

Applying a three-tone camouflage preceded the winter painting: first dark yellow, then spots of dark green and red brown. This was then treated with a diluted black and brown "washing" and dry brushed with lighter tones. Only then I started to apply the winter wash. It is done by dry brushing the tank with white oil colour.

One should do the strokes in a downward manner to simulate the effects of weather on the winter camouflage. Snow and mud in the running gear was made with mixtures of white glue, food soda and sand, or wood pulp.

Rust stains and the rusty muffler were made of diluted steel wire. The rust was then diluted with thinner and mixed with mat varnish. This mixture was painted onto the kit. The symbol of the "GD"-division, an outline steel helmet, was hand painted in black.
 

The T34/41...

...is likewise from Tamiya. As I had an "ancient" model from this Russian tank left, which I’d built twenty years ago, this was the suitable wreck for my diorama. Due to my poor modeling skills at that time, it was a must to tear down all of the outer details and to build them completely new.

As changing to the former outfit, I made rings onto the top of the turret and handgrips for mounted infantry, because that was common on Russian tanks in those days. The cooling intake gratings were cut out and substituted by a plastic mesh from the tailors shop.

The headlight was drilled out at the front. With an aluminium-foil the inner part was lined and a "bulb" out of plastic rod, heated at the one end, inserted. With "crystal-clear" I made the protective glass.

When I had finished the upgrading of the T34, I felt a little bit sad, that it was bound to be cut into pieces. It was a bunch of a work to get the tank cut off the lower hull! The problem was, to find a straight cutting line all around the tank: I solved this by dipping the kit into a pot of colored water.

Then I only had to lead my electric mini cutter along this colour-marked line. Sanding with an emery paper onto a stone plate leveled out the mistakes. The tracks caused some problems, as the vinyl material reacts stubborn to sanding efforts. They had to be cut by means of a model knife and a pair of scissors.
 

The SdKfz 251/1

... is of course also from Tamiya, however this model was changed from the version with heavy rocket launchers. As those vehicles were similar, except for the launchers and the direction finder for the driver, one has not to do a lot of work to get an SdKfz 251/1.

By the way: the kit is superb! As one homemade improvement I cut out one storage box on the right side of the vehicle and showed it open. Another improvement is the substitution of the right fender with one that is made of sheet metal. This can be crumpled to simulate damage. For the construction one only has to bend thin aluminium-sheet around the original part and cut it to the right dimension. Onto both fenders I put distance estimators, which were made of steel wire that got a drop of low curing super glue, mixed with one-compound-putty at the top.

This time the winter camouflage was painted with an old brush and a relatively thick white enamel colour. The brushstrokes were done in a very random and lousy way after most of the colour was taken from the brush (but not so much as it is usual when dry brushing!). Many armoured vehicle crews in the German army just did it the same way to achieve winter cammo by applying slaked lime.
 

The bridge

First of all I had to draw a plan. The construction layout of the bridge can be seen in this picture. Several profiles of wood were in use and after cutting, glued into place with cyanoacrylate-glue.

Before fixing the blown up parts, the girders were cut into a little bit from different directions and then broken apart. Thus the impact of the explosives to the bridge was simulated.

The paint job was done with highly diluted burnt sienna oil colour. Dry brushing with brown and ochre set highlights. Traces of cars and tanks, that had passed the bridge in its better days, were simulated by slightly burring into the planks with a motor tool. Debris, which is still lying on the planks, came from the waste wood material, that I’d had used to build the bridge. To make the "snow" slightly covering the surface of the bridge, it was sprayed by means of an old airbrush, filled with highly diluted white glue and afterwards sprinkled with food soda. Surplus soda had to be blown away.
 

The figures:

Sometimes in reports on dioramas the descriptions of the figures are mentioned, but often they are only worth one short subordinate clause. I do want to describe them a little bit more than usual, as they made a lot of work.

I usually prefer high quality figures, as figures can make or break a diorama, but sometimes I take old corpses and upgrade them with new legs, heads and/or hands. This leads to figures of great variety for a reasonable price. I never thought, that the figures would cost me most of the time of all items within this work! Firstly there are seventeen of them, secondly nearly all of them had to be treated with heavy "surgery"!

The two wounded soldiers in the SdKfz 251/1 for instance are old Tamyia figures (a driver and an officer from the Tamyia fourfold AA-gun crew). They got several cuts and putty fillers to fit into the crew compartment of the SdKfz 251/1.

The one with the "headache" was deserved a head from Verlinden. This company also provided the tank crew and two infantrymen on top of the Panzer IV. I had to change the positions of hands and arms slightly, especially those of the man, which is looking out of the side hatch. The other infantryman on top of the tank is an old figure from Tamyia.

A good deal is made, when one purchases the Dragon Hummel-crew. These soldiers can be converted into many positions and in my diorama they serve as fuel porters, "cheers-leaders" and comforter of the wounded. Even the "extractor"- soldier nearby the T34, who seeks for Diesel to refuel the not visible supply vehicles of this small combat team, is one out of this bunch.

Referring to the heads, all of them were painted with artist’s oil paint. Onto the base coat of dark yellow or white enamels I applied a slight wash of burnt sienna oil colour. Only in the deepening there should stay remainders of this wash. Then a mixture of white and burnt sienna sets the highlights in the faces, like the top of the nose, the cheeks, the chin, outer parts of the ear and the forehead.

More burnt sienna in this mix sets the contrasts of darker parts. Blend these shades into one another to avoid sharp margins. Because of the fact, that at scale models there is not so much surface to reflect the light than in nature - and therefore seem darker - you should keep your faces light, especially when depicting soldiers in cold climate. To control the effect, watch your figure at a distance of at about 15 inches.

The eyes are the sticking point of a figure! Mix enamels: white with a little dash of medium blue, dilute it at about the rate of 50% with solvent and use a small brush for painting the eyeball.

If done properly, the edges of the eye still show the dark colour of the previously applied wash of burnt sienna. Then a black drop, attached with the needle serves for the iris. Don´t be shy to retry, if your results are squint-eyed soldiers!

It’s better to set the irises off the middle, to avoid this mistake. Finally you can seal the eyes with gloss varnish and you have got the shining too!

The winter camouflage of the uniforms were painted in different ways:

Some were achieved by grounding them gray and dry brushing them white (all colors are enamels), some were painted in off-white watercolors (Andrea or Valejo-company) and shadowed in the pleats and folds by using darker shades.

These were achieved by adding gray or brown to the white. "Mud" is sprayed onto the lower figure parts with an airbrush, using dark brown.
 

The Diorama:

Base construction and layout

At the beginning one has to consider the layout of the terrain and the vehicles. To form the landscape, I tailored a Styrofoam-piece and fixed it with white glue onto a pressboard. This was covered with a plaster bandage.

The next step is, to form the ground texture with a cellulose-white glue- mixture. I slightly pressed the vehicles into this compound to get the track marks. The road sign, logs in the ice, stones, bush trunks (small tree branches), sand and grass (bristle hairs) were placed. Then the "ice" was made by using a plastic sheet, that was cut to a proper form.

I cut out holes for the bridge piers and placed them into the "ice", respectively the base underneath with two-compound glue. The T34 was screwed through the wooden base onto the surface plate. For the screw head I had to drill a depression into the underside of the base plate. Otherwise the diorama would not lie even onto the ground.

"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...":

All of the ground and additional parts of the lower T34 were sprayed by an old airbrush with white glue that was highly diluted with water.

Then food soda was sprinkled all over the white glue. This is best done, when one uses a sheet of paper. From its edge the distribution of the soda works very well.

Caution had to be paid, to show a certain direction of the wind that transports snow or the effect of sun, melting it particularly at spots in direction to the south. After this heavy snowfalls (two third of the soda finally covered the floor of my room instead of my diorama!), the rest of the vehicles (devoid of snow at the upper surfaces, as they were on the move and the snowfalls ended previously) were added (screwed and glued).
 

Result

All in all it took me at about half a year to build this diorama. It wasn´t too expensive, as I mainly used old Tamiya kits, except for the SdKfz 250/1. Only the figures from the high-quality manufacturers showed favorably in the books.

For me it´s a usual procedure, to research the historical background, terrain- and the weather conditions of a planned scene as well as the portrayed vehicles and figures. So reference material is inevitable. A good source is the internet, but one has to be careful about the reliability of the sources. Luckily I have access to a military library, which provides a vast amount of information. Counting the costs of a diorama often lacks these items of research. But fortunately this may not be applied to me...

The Diorama is 52 cm long and just as broad. I needed approx. 450-500 working hours and the costs for the production are approx. € 100. - without the expendable materials.


© 2000 Schachinger

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