Rapid Fire! Eastern Front in 20mm - The Ferdinands of the sPzJgAbt. 653 at Kursk

It's July and in the last few days this unit was made to back up German efforts at Kursk. The sPzJgAbt. 653, half of the bigger sPzJgRegiment 656, crashes through the first line of Soviet defences at Veselyi Berezhoi being used as the spearhead of the German assault. The way the Ferdinands led the German attacks is considered a big mistake of General Model as they were used like rams and not as long range distance guns were ist powerful 88m guns could knock almost everything behind its 200m frontal armour. Even so the Regiment (two battalions with a total of 89 Sdkfz 184 Ferdinands) is credited with the destruction of 500 Soviet tanks even if loosing half of their own machines in the process. 

The SPzJgAbt.653 had big colourful squares painted at the back of their Ferdinands to identify the different platoons inside the three companies. I just used the most colourful of them for effect. 

All seven Ferdinands are three Esci kits, one Fujimi kit and three repainted Altaya die-casts. The Fujimi kit (number 121), in fact an Elefant model, is very close to the size of the Esci model even if the box says"1/76th scale" with only two millimiters difference in lenght.

The command tank of Hauptmann Spielmann is inspired on a photo from the parent 654 battalion. I chose this scheme because of its striking difference in relation to all other simpler schemes. 

The Esci model is a mix of the initial Ferdinand and the later Elefant. The Esci model carries the round Elefant´s commander cuppola, the same from the Stug III, and not the initial square one used at Kursk. I tried to solve the issue with foliage made of two component paste around that place. The MG of the later Elefant was also left out. The Esci kit also doesn´t carry the driver´s periscope, like the Ferdinand didn't...Well, as you can see we have a typical kit of the 80s´, trying to please everybody!

 Even so its a very nice and detailed model and I remember the pleasure of seeing them for the first time many years ago when I was around 12 in the long gone Joaninha toy shop in my local home town, Coimbra. And as they were slow machines they are still here! 😛

Now the Altaya die-casts. They are true late Elefants. Fortunately the extra frontal armour with the Mg port can be easily detached making it closer to the Ferdinand. Then some foliage was placed in the commander´s cuppola and also in the driver's periscope, another late addition to the Elefant's model, when the Sdkfz 184 were taken to be refurbished after Kursk. 

These Tank Hunter battalions worked together with a swarm of Borgward BIV and StugIII. As I don't have yet any Borgward I used the Revell's Goliath and a Sdkfz 304 Springer. In reality the Springer only showed up in the last few months of the war but its a nice little model from AMBN (All Models Brand New) that was collecting dust for years. 

Next: Scammels for the 1st AD 1940 or Italian trucks for the 12th PzSS in Normandy.