After a hiatus from modelling, or rather from building new models since rebuilding/repairing existing models takes up quite a bit of my time, I’m back to enjoying the hobby in the form I like best; a new kit, built to completion and then moving onto the next. However, this is a kit that a lot of people have said they either have or want and basically when you look online you see precious few built. Maybe it’s the size or the daunting task of the many wheels, track, honestly, I don’t know. Anyway, to hopefully encourage a build of one, I thought I’d share my own, stage by stage, including various additions I made because, lets face it, when it’s a paper panzer, you can essentially add all the bells and whistles you want. Okay, the P1000 Ratte was a proposal for a 1000 tonne tank that was actually worked on by those crazy Nazis when the Soviets brought out tanks that managed to best the various panzers they had in service. The 100 tonne tank, already massive, wasn’t enough for Hitler, so when it was suggested they build a tank ten times that weight, it caught the lunatic imagination of Hitler and he approved development. Various studies, even a few models were built before Albert Speer cancelled the farce. However, since then, the Ratte has been some sort of mythical beast, and over the last few years a few models have appeared of what various manufacturers think the tank would have been like. The Model Collect version is mostly the smae as the Takom 1/144 version, just in a larger scale and with several different versions of the kit with some additions. Mine is version 2, the Scharnhorst. Given this tank actually uses a triple 11" turret that would have come from the battleship Scharnhorst, not tough to see why it has the name. In fact, the turret is mostly the same as another Model Collect kit, that of a real life fort in Norway, Austrått Fort, which uses a turret from the decommissioned battleship Gneisenau. It still exists today, and is an incredible sight, the most intact battleship turret of any German battleship of WW2. Digressing even more, I recently built this fort, so will be publishing a topic about that too. But back to the P1000. the weapons fit the kit suggests is pretty basic; the 11" turret, two quad Flakvierling of the 20mm variety, and two searchlights, again, of the type used on Scharnorst. Here’s the version as it started, sans wheels, tracks etc.
To me, for a 1000 tonne tank, that’s not enough. So, using some spare parts from the kit itself, and one or two bits from other Model Collect kits, (they include various trees in kits, often for only one or two parts) I started to beef the Scharnhorst up. First, a forward gun of a smaller variety, basically to tackle any tank or afv that made it closer to the tank and needn’t trouble the 11" guns.
Then came the aft section. Again, something that really didn’t sit well with me was the lack of any smaller weapons to deter attacks from the rear, so I added two tank turrets, E-75 size.
Next up, the anti-aircraft armament. I had a couple of experimental a/a turrets, again from one of the E-75 kits, and mounted those behind the searchlights, one either side. Then, using the Flakvierling, I remembered a photo of Scharnhorst with twin emplacements on a single turret. Now, the kit actually included these emplacements, but only to use one of them on the turret of another version of the kit. So I decided to double up and, well, here we go.
Now I get a bit more inventive. I recall seeing one model of this with a twin 12.8cm FlaK 40 Zwilling mount on the aft platform. To me, it felt wrong because it was simply in mid-air, and these guns took up a lot of space and to fire them, move them to firing position, load them, whatever, the crew had to move around them, and on that model they’d have been rather stuck. So again, digging into the spare parts, and the 12.8cm FlaK 40 Zwilling included with the aforementioned Fort kit I built, and a bit of hardboard, I came up with something a little more practical, which I’ve left unpainted in the photos so it is easier to see what I did and with what. Then, on top of that not one, but two 12.8cm FlaK 40 Zwilling. Will they both stay on, who can say, after all, my intention was always to add a winter white camo to the German grey, but this is how far I’ve reached now. More to come, but I hope, if nothing else, it inspired a bit of invention to add reasonable and logical weapons fits to this colossal land battleship.
Maybe you could find room to install an aircraft catapult for an Arado, or Me., for recon. 
I once saw someone mount a helicopter pad on the back, but I wasn’t keen on that because the notion of landing a helicopter between all the rest, no thanks. As for a catapult, would you need it when you have fields all around? One thing I did think of was maybe a mast, a combined radio antenna and crows nest affair. After all, if you are shooting 11" guns, most of the fire would be beyond what is visible from a lower level. the beauty of what I did with the two twin 128mm guns is that it’s totally removable, so really it could be changed in lots of ways. Now the other news, I actually have another version of this kit so…
How about a Duplex Drive (like Sherman DD’s) so it could actually sail, thus coming around full circle - ship to tank, and back to ship! 
Since it would have had trouble on land, I’m thinking it would have had to be water proof and basically roll right across the river, as long as it wasn’t too deep.
Well…they had Landwasserschleppers, that had both tracks and propellers. But they didn’t weigh a million tons! 
This is some awesome work- very inventive stuff.
Much appreciated. When you think of the state of actual battleships in WW2, the beginning to the end, what I’m doing here has gradually been the sort of increase in anti-aircraft armament that pre-existing ships underwent as the war progressed.
Not a great deal of progress, simply the new structure painted to match the rest of the model. The rest of my modelling evening yesterday was a start on clipping together the track, which will probably be about two meters all together when finished. At least it’s easier than gluing the wretched things 
After a bit of a hiatus, (new storage heaters throughout the house, renovations and so on) a post about the progress, however haltingly, on the Scharnhorst P1000. Lots and lots of wheels on multiple bogies, for want of a better word, in fact twelve on each. I’ve used these before, ModelCollect have reused a set they made originally for 1/35 tanks, ad this is something they do a lot in various kits. Given they’re all What if? Paper Panzers it doesn’t really matter, and t does mean that if you are ever a part short, as I ended up on this kit, you can find it on another. Anyway, wheels painted grey, then white, (the tank is to be winterised) and then weathered. You cn judge the size with first a 1/72 Tiffy next to the lower hull, and then a 1/35 Maus for comparison to this 1/72 monster. Also, lots and lots of track, six lengths in all, and while I’ve tested them, they are about three to six links short. Lets see how it goes when everything’s fitted. Anyway, lots to do.
And then a final painting in a brick pattern with faux windows to camouflage it as an office building? 
Cool idea!
Ken
I’d actually thought more along the lines of making it look like a snow covered hill, and who would notice another of those in the cold Russian winter? Seriously, I had considered some sort of scene, I mean, the usual three colour patches so often seen on large German WW2 tanks, or the Octopus scheme, none would work. Only something like the splinter scheme, often used on battleships or cruisers made sense, but while they sort of worked at sea, (not really, they never worked) on land they’d just draw attention.
As they used to say in a television series I watched, moving swiftly on…
The tracks were reasonably easy to place on the bogies, and look pretty good. Last time I made anything with more than two tracks was the American prototype heavy that Dragon made, and that was a lot harder. Placing the top and bottom of the main hull was also pretty simple, which surprised me since I shouldn’t have placed the side-skirts into place until after the top and bottom, with tracks were together. The bogies have a main spar that fits comfortably into the side skirts and honestly, it probably helped having the sides firmly clued and painted rather than trying to do that after. Handling the beast while gluing and trying to keep everything intact, not a great idea. So I’d already painted the turrets, searchlights, etc. and no, that white isn’t finished, it’s just progress so far with the hull still to do when the last of the grey is solidly dry, (couldn’t paint front and back until glued and the seams filled and sanded). So here we are, almost every bit of construction done, now just the painting and weathering to do. What the white does is just highlight how massive the 11" turret is compared to the rest of the armament. Oh, and since the photos I added a few ladders from the spares included, just for practicality. I mean, you’d have to get to the turret top flak guns somehow, and it wouldn’t be via hatch in the thick armour, and then smaller ladders into the gun positions themselves. Fortunately, ModelCollect include a lot of spare pieces, since many of the sprues have been used on other kits in this range. Now while the last of the paint dries, finishing work on a companion piece, the P300 carrier which is entirely fictitious but then, so is almost all the MC What if? range.
The purpose of the splinter camouflage for ships wasn’t so much as to make the ship hard to see, but to make it hard to target by complicating the process of determining its bearing, speed, and distance. Unless you’ve got serious weather churning up the sea, a ship is going to stand out pretty readily on the horizon (not to mention the smoke from the stack(s)), but before radar, a small error in judging course, speed, or distance can significantly throw off an outgoing salvo. And even if the main battery can fire out to 15,000 or more yards, against anything but a fortification even a small change in course by the target will render a shot a miss, while the Ratte isn’t going to be moving fast enough to get out of the way of incoming artillery, much less direct fire.