Building a Rubicon Panzerbefehlswagen III Ausf. H

I picked up some of the new Rubicon Panzer III kits from Great Escape Games this week. I initially bought 2 x Panzerbefehlswagen III (command tanks) and 2 x Panzer III, but will inevitably go back for some more to build out an armoured platoon for Iron Cross. These kits cover several variants, in this case, you can build E/H/J/L for the Befehlswagen and H/J/L/M/N for the regular Panzer III.  I have decided to build variant H for the whole platoon, which gives me a bit more flexibility in which theatre they can be deployed to.  According to Wikipedia, Ausf. H was active from 1940, so I can conceivably use them for pretty much every battle thereafter. The main armament (5 cm KwK 38 L/42) is a bit poky though, so fielding it much later than North Africa will have little impact when pitted against some Shermans!

I purchased some of the earlier Rubicon Panzer IIIs about two years ago and my memory of building them was it was a lot simpler than creating these latest models. The kits from Rubicon seem to be evolving into something more appreciated by a modeller, who is concerned with the fine level of detail that the latest Rubicon kits have, than a wargamer; it is far less effort to buy a one piece resin cast vehicle than it is to carefully assemble these kits.

The artwork on the box is really nice and that quality extends to the instruction leaflet. This is reminding me of the Airfix kits that I used to build 30-something years ago as a kid. The leaflet is printed in colour, which is useful to help you distinguish between the various parts of the kit which relate to the different variants. Whoever researched and created these kits, and then thought through the construction process, has done a thorough and meticulous job. 

The instructions are fairly easy to follow: they are a bit like the Haynes car manuals from the 1970s and 1980s in that they feature an "exploded" view illustrating how each part goes together.  It is well worth cutting all the pieces for a given sub-assembly, such as the turret, and dry fitting them all together, so that you can check which way up each part should go before you start gluing.

Just one small criticism here. The number of variants means that there is some drilling required. Thankfully, I purchased a small, manually-operated drilling tool (a pin vice drill, or something like that?). The problem with that is that none of my drill bits exactly match the size of hole required. How about putting the correct drill bit in the box Rubicon?  I had to drill each hole and then widen it by carefully rotating a scalpel in the hole...not ideal.

One more criticism: some holes are required on all the variants.  Why couldn't Rubicon create the mould with those all-variant holes in them, as they had done on some other parts? There are four sprues containing all the parts, plus several variants; all the parts are numbered.

The moulding is pin sharp with no visible mould lines. The plastic is soft enough to be easily snipped off with a pair of side cutters/snippers and then gently filed to smooth the cut edge.

I haven't yet painted the model, so haven't applied the decals, but there is a good selection allowing lots of variation.

Above are the tools that I used: pin vice drill, file, scalpel, tweezers, side cutters and some Revell plastic glue (the sort that melts the plastic together to create a good bond). Obviously, none of this is supplied with the kit, so you'll need to purchase all these tools to assemble it correctly.

Another tool that I picked up this weekend from Hobbycraft for £30 was a magnifying glass with an in-built light. This really helped when reading the instructions, though not particularly small, were quite intricate in places. At only £30, I think this was a bargain and I suspect my miniature painting may now improve too.

Above are three of the separate sub-assemblies: the main deck, the turret deck and the chassis. I suspect that without the ability to create four or five variants from the same kit, a lot of the pieces could have been moulded as one piece, rather than lots of little pieces. It is quite pain-staking, but rewarding at the same time. It's a part of the hobby that I haven't really been involved with for quite a while, so it was actually nice to go back and build this kit. I think that it probably took about 3-4 hours in total.

The main deck of the tank (above) has 19 separate parts to it. The model featured below is the Befehlswagen, so has a large antenna array on the rear deck. I have also added some brass rods (which were not in the kit) for the extra antennae that the command tank possessed.

One thing that I learnt from dry-fitting each part, prior to gluing, is that it is a really good idea to dry fit! I wish that I had not attached the tracks to the chassis until after spraying a base coat; I can imagine that it will be the devil's own job to get the paint into all the crevices. Does anyone have a top tip for that?  

There is one piece (pictured above to the right of the chassis) that I am glad that I have glued on yet. It was supposed to be affixed to the rear of the chassis, but I am going to wait until after I have attached the deck and chassis parts together. I can easily see that if I had glued this slightly out of place, then the deck and chassis would not have fit together nicely.

Another issue that dry-fitting turned up was that the turret ring did not properly accommodate the turret; it was so tight that I worried that I was going to break something by trying to force the turret into the ring, so I ended up using the file to shave the inside circumference of the turret ring to loosen it a little.

Anyway, I only had a couple of minor gripes over this kit, but other than that, it was fun to assemble and, once I can field 6 of them on the gaming table, will be even more fun to play with. I will post up some photos once I have assembled a few more and painted them.

I just need to find some suitable reference photos for the colour scheme now. Here's a pic of a Panzer III from Bovington. I know it's not an Ausf H, probably later, an L maybe, judging from the size of the main gun.

I have also assembled one of the Panzer III (SdKfz 141) kits as well as part of the same troop for an early war Iron Cross force.