1940 3rd/4th German Panzer Division 1/200 (Part I: The Panzer Brigade)

The Third and Fourth Panzer Divisions attacked through Belgium and Holland. They fought the French 2nd and 3rd DLM in the Gembloux Gap.They were "light" in the numbers of Pz III and Pz IV's containing a high proportion of the Pz I and Pz II models. Hearing that I knew it was a wargaming project must (in 1/200).

The Armoured Element:

The 1940 German Panzer Brigade of a Panzer Division, see below reading from top to bottom:

• Panzer Brigade HQ
• Panzer Regiment HQ x 2
• Panzer Battalions x 4

The Panzer Brigade's fighting "manoeuvre elements", the Panzer Battalions (x 4), see below reading left to right:

• Light Company x 2 [4 Tanks each, total 8]
• HQ Element x 1 [2 Tanks]
• Medium Company x 1 [4 Tanks]

14 Tanks in total

Panzer Regiment HQ (1) see below:

• Pz Bef I x 1
• Pz II (Recon) x 1

Panzer Regiment HQ (2) see below:

• Pz Bef I x 1
• Pz II (Recon) x 1

The anatomy of the Panzer Battalion (Note: All "company" formations multiplied by four):

The Medium Company (see below):

• Pz IIIE (37mm) x 2
• Pz IVD (short 75mm) x 2

Light Company (1) see below:

• Pz I x 2
• Pz II x 2

Light Company (2) see below:

• Pz I x 2
• Pz II x 2

Battalion HQ Company (see below):

• Pz I Bef
• Pz II (Recon)

Back up at the top of the food chain the Panzer Brigade HQ:

• Command HQ Stand x 1
• Hanomag 251/10 x 1 

In total 60 Tanks (each stand represents between 4-6 actual tanks, about a fighting strength of 300+) which in 1940 is a lot of armoured fire power!

GHQ Panzer IV H's in Battalion Strength

Here we come:

Walking down the street:

Get the funniest looks:

From everyone we meet:

Hey, hey we're the Mark IV's: 

People say we 'panzer' around:

But we're too busy upgrading:

To let incoming get us down ...

OK I'll get my coat but first before I go I should apologize to any dyed in the wool Monkees fan who happens on by (in my defense I too was a childhood follower, along with the Banana Splits). But here you have the above, a heavily reinforced (sixteen as opposed to the normal eleven Pz Mk IV H's) German 1944 Mk IV H Panzer Battalion. I can put my brush down now, an exhausted but happy man. Bonus points to anyone who spotted the GHQ Hanomag 251/1 but Heroics and Ros AA Mobelwagon :)

Note: Remember if you click an image you get a film strip but you can zoom in further by once you are in the filmstrip "right click" and select "view image" to see an even closer shot of each photo :)

Labelling the kit?

A perverse post perhaps but I am betwixt and between experimentation. You see I left a deliberate space at the back of each stand in the Heroics & Ross "German 1944 Panzer IV Battalion" to fit in labeling information. Now this is a good trick learned from more experienced friends as you can see at a glance what the stands represent. These same friends choose to field a historically named  "Division" and follow its Order of Battle and use a printed labeling system, printed from MS Word and Excel looking very neat and professional. While waiting for a copy of said templates to arrive I got impatient and popped into my local Hobbycraft and purchased a while "chalk style" marker pen. I penned in a generic unit designation on my painted stands (see below):

It's more Art Deco than Sans Serif and I am musing about its rough and ready appeal versus small but neat type face. Whether is destroys or augments my painting style? I can always paint over the label again with  brown and revert to using a cut-out from a printed sheet (see close-up below).  

Going more generic than historic also seems more flexible, "Pz IV #4" makes as much sense that "Lehr II/130 Pz IV #4" as long as I use either: the same division or different divisions are uniquely discernible with a different labeling look (colour?).  

Your thoughts appreciated :)

A fistful of tiny panzers caught on a decent camera

Hopefully the focus is much clearer on these pictures of the 1/300 Heroics and Ross miniatures of the 1944 Panzer Division "Panzer IV battalion" (see below):

The adjustable Halogen light, friend to all miniature painters on lonely dark nights, shines brightly down on them :)

Now for a bit of a closer look. Note, I tried to get a fair amount of detail into the camouflage of the vehicles, but the thought of trying to decal or paint markings on something that small froze my blood (and I know some people are capable of that sort of thing)!

The march of the Pz IV's continued (see below):

What next? Well, I do have a battalion+ of GHQ Panzer IV H's next up on the painting tray, we'll just have to see how easy they are to paint, but just looking at the GHQ level of fine detail is quite unsettling, but in a nice way.

Footnote on painting technique:
I experimented with trying to get a three-tone, late-war German style camouflage scheme by only just painting "two of the colours" (yellow and green), inking in the third as a brown shadow without explicitly trying to paint it. The theory being that 1/300 is just too small to get too busy with too many different colours to paint and blend. It is hoped that the "minds eye" may well do the trick for us with the suggestion of the third colour. It's still a tad patchy rather than stripey but good enough for my first effort :)     

1/300 WW2 German Panzer IV F2 Battalion (Spearhead/BGC)

The Panzer IV F2 kit laid out in a battalion formation two companies up (plus leading recon Pz IV platoon) and one company back in reserve. The HQ Pz IV platoon plus AA and Engineering Hanomag 1/251 mills around in the middle (see below). One feature of this compact formation is that all the individual platoons are within three inches of the Battalion HQ (central to the picture below) and thus would get a +1 rally from suppression modifier. The command radius of the HQ is twelve inches (on the attack, doubled if defending a designated static position), with the exception that the recon element can still be in "command" (double)twenty four inches away:

Sweeping down for a closer look at the leading elements. I still have to put unit marker notation on the rear of each stand, along the brown strip where I have left a "space".

Even closer still. This is about as in focus as I can get with the Blackberry's camera. The jury is still out as I am perfecting my factory painting technique. I think it looks too spotty, or when things are so small as this who cares, they are going to be viewed from six foot away!

Trouble is I care too much!