Hobby Boss has slated smaller scale armor kits for July: Panther Ausf. A in 1/48 scale and a PzKpfw. 38(t) Ausf. E/F in 1/72 scale.
Is the machine gun slit in the hull correct for a Panther A as I thought that was a Panther D feature
Seems suspicious. My limited knowledge says that one of the visible changes when the Ausf. A came out was the introduction of the ball mount.
Edit: See 2 posts immediately below
Note to self: Check references before typing …
No, this is indeed an ausf A. The major changes from the ausf D were in the turret, and the giveaway is the cast cupola.
Later ausf As had the ball MG mount, but early ones still had the flap-style.
Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two (revised edition) by Chamberlain, Doyle and Jentz.
“The hull design remained unchanged, but a new ball-mount was designed to replace the letter-box flap MG-port. These ball-mounts were fitted to a proportion of Ausf A from August 1943, and were fitted to all Ausf A from late 1943”
The ball-mount was thus present on some of the Ausf A from the very beginning and on all of them later. The book does not say anything about the percentage of that “proportion” but that is not relevant here and now.
