Sunday 16 November 2014

Kicking up a Rakete - part 1

Regular readers will be aware that I have of late been scouring the planet for vehicles in 1/48ish scale for my Little Cold Wars project.  In the course of this search I noticed a small range of Tamiya models in just this scale.  The range included a Jagdpanzer Kanone - just the thing for my West Germans.  I expected a fairly basic kit but when the thing arrived (a little over £10 including shipping from the Far East) it emerged from the box in the condition you see below.
This is an image from the Tamiya website but I can assure you that my Kanone looks identical.  Being a motorised model the tracks are a little chunky but that aside it's a lovely thing.  In term of scale it works out nearer to 1/40 but I can live with that.
It soon occurred to me (as it had to the 1960s Bundeswehr) that a 90mm gun is all very well but what if these new-fangled guided missiles catch on?  Their solution was the Jagdpanzer Rakete with the 'kanone' replaced by er, 'raketes...'  SS-11 to be precise.

I decided to copy those clever Germans and another model was soon on order.
When it arrived I set to work removing the gun and it's mantlet.  I had expected this to involve a great deal of razor saw action but the gun assembly turned out to be a separate part which was easily(ish) prised off.
Missiles were aircraft weapons sourced from the spares box.  The periscopes and bow MG (not fitted to all such vehicles) were adapted from 1/76 scale truck axles.  So far so good.  I'd better paint the thing.



Sorry about the title.  OK so the spelling is different but it was too good to ignore.  Musical link here.

13 comments:

Archduke Piccolo said...

Like the title, like the vehicle, like the adaptation. By the way, just out of curiosity, I wondered if there was a Maori word 'rakete' and what its translation would be. As it transpires there are two meanings: 'racquet', and ... yep, you guessed it. Actually they are obviously transliterations of English words into Maori...

Pete. said...

Very cool Tim- great conversion.

Cheers,

Pete.

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

From "fringe" project to "obsession"!


Sorry this must be a CoW 2015 Game already planned!

Al said...

cool project

Milgeek said...

Very interesting vehicle. Very nice conversion. Enjoying these posts a lot.

Don M said...

Well done Tim, that's pretty much how the West Germans went about it.

Tim Gow said...

Archduke Piccolo
So the Germans copied the Maoris? Gosh!

Tim Gow said...

Pete
Thanks

Tim Gow said...

Geordie
Hey, I can stop anytime. If only I had some willpower....

Tim Gow said...

Al
I thought it would be an easy win!

Tim Gow said...

Stephen Beat
Thanks - bodging never goes out of fashion.

Tim Gow said...

Don M
They probably took it a bit more seriously though.

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Tim your scales are getting bigger and bigger