38t Panzer "Marsch"

The perils of trying to update a blog on a mobile device mean that I am typing this post again. Perhaps it was my chubby fingers or a "interface error" but here for the second time of telling is the "38t Panzer Marsch" (see below): 

These are all examples of the Fuji 38t 1/76 kit, copiously available in the 1990's where most if not all of the above were collected. Like their namesake Skoda 38t the kits were relatively cheap and easy to put together. Many a pitched wargame battle was fought against the Matchbox French Char 1 bis (one notable game occurred in a London pub's wargames room where "Rommel" as per history took a part.French DCR in France 1940).

They have a lightened "hard campaigning" look about them and so need the balkan black German cross and those 'red and white' large side numbers. One day that will come ;)

The 38t is a nice little model that serves well for the Germans in Poland 1939 (as part of their "Light" Divisions), in France 1940 famously with Rommel in the 7th Panzer Division and also 8th Panzer and even into Russian in 1941. Axis satellite allies also used them post-1942 but there the camo schemes started to go three toned and away from the grey. You could even find them as mobile "train" defenses, carried on flat-beds in "Partisan country" to deter partisan attention.   

35t Solo Panzer "Anton the Great"

This one is a rare Esci original Skoda 35t tank, with the fabled 'dustbin lid' cupola. Serving in Poland, France and early Barbarossa Russia in 1941. They did not survive the winter of 41 in German service, but variants lived on in the satellite Romanian and Hungarian forces (much to the distress of their crews when they faced a T-34 or KV-1).

This one is in the usual "decal free" state and is more an "individual" modelling project than a "company force" wargaming OoB. It is destined to be the last serviceable Panzer 35t in the 6th Panzer Division driving to enigrad in late 1941. Due to mechanical breakdown it was eventually pushed into a ditch. The Panzer crews now fighting on as infantry.