Late war German vehicles

I've been working on a couple more late war German vehicles, a JagdPanther and a Wirbelwind, both kits from Rubicon, for my Iron Cross armies.

The Wirbelwind is based on the chassis of a Panzer IV, so in common with a lot of Rubicon kits, there were plenty of spare parts, so I also built the Panzer IV turret at the same time, so add to the other two Panzer IVs that I built a couple of weeks ago.

I've got a little bit more weathering to do; I've only added a small amount of wet mud so far and will be applying lighter coloured weathering powders over the top. I tried out a different technique for painting the camouflage on this vehicle and I'm not particularly happy with it, so will return to the same technique I used on the Jagdpanther below and most other vehicles that I have been painting over the last year. Unless you try, you don't learn though.

As with the Panzer/Wirbelwind, there is more weathering to done on the Jagdpanther, to which I have applied quite a bit of wet mud. I'm also much happier with how the camouflage turned out.

I had never really taken much notice of the Jagdpanther (preferring the more mainstream Panzer III and IV workhorses for my armies) until I re-watched episode 4 ("Replacements") of Band of Brothers. It's the scene where Easy Company are riding into a Dutch town called Nuenen on some British Shermans and then a Jagdpanther comes roaring out from its camouflaged ambush position.

I immediately thought that I had to get one of those, plus some Shermans for it to fight against. It has also inspired me to get back into making some more terrain loosely based on Nuenen, which is where the scene is (very loosely) based, so that I can recreate the scene on the tabletop. This chap has visited Nuenen and compares the actual town with the Band of Brothers set: Visiting Band of Brothers: The Battle of Nuenen? | WW2 Traveling #5 - YouTube  Obviously, it's a bit different, but I don't think it detracts at all from the BoB series.

Waiting on the production line is a bit of opposition: a platoon of Shermans and a Firefly.

As noted above, there are always spare bits in each Rubicon kit, so with the addition of a tiny bit of plasticard and a few odds and ends out of my Rubicon bits box, I have created a second Jagdpanther in a hull down position. Before I make a start on the Sherman platoon and any Dutch buildings for my fictional recreation of Nuenen, I'll get this painted up.

Plenty to do!