hello friends my latest diorama.
To my knowledge, only Bronco released and perhaps Gecko, there has been work to bring it up to date.
lots of details have been redone on the turret, elements from Panzer III were used for the damping system, the barrel was drilled with several holes, I redetailed the jack, the tracks come from the scrap box, lots of parts have been refined the putty is required. The on-board prize also comes from the rabiot box.
Pascal, nicely done! The attention and detail to the tank commander and his head gear really stand out. The head phones were the first detail to catch my eye.
Looking forward to seeing more of your work.
Beautiful work.
But there’s some historical info that other builders may want to know, since references are hard to find in this area which your model addresses.
During the Poland campaign, and up to sometime in 1942, German headphone covers were orange.
In the Panzer II Ausf.a-c (lowercase letters) the commander could only listen to radio traffic on his headphones. He had no microphone because there was no intercom: just a feed of the receiver signal into the turret.
From the Panzer II Ausf.A onwards, the commander had both headphones and microphones. He could speak to the radio operator, who could not speak back. He could also hear the radio receiver. The driver was not included on this system.
For the Panzer II Ausf.F, a proper intercom was installed.
David
I really like the figure putting on his jacket. Did you make this figure?
Ca c’est superbe mon vieux!! J’aime beaucoup le soldat qui met son manteau. Aussi les pavés et les murs sont bien faits. Bravo!
Thank you. I’ve noted your comments before and have incorporated them into my models. Hard to find pix of the orange headphone pads, but more just show them as lighter in color and that is enough. We need to use this info and more detail on when the change occurred and documentation from OKW sources would help. Thanks for your contribution.
There are many, many photographs of the orange headphones; but unfortunately most of them are black-and-white photos.
A diligent search turns up a few colour photos, often faded or discoloured:
Plus, the portrait that I already posted seems to be a very accurate one. You can identify the tank type and the equipment in it.
The information comes from this collector of radio equipment, who seems to know more than anybody else about the subject. The page has photos of some actual orange headphones that he owns.
David
Many thanks. This is a great resource, and great pix of the lighter colored headphone pads. Specifically for the DAK, the newer black pads would be from stores issued after the fall of Tobruk I would guess. Agree?
I’m not sure when the black ones arrived; sometime in 1942, it seems. And I’m not sure if or when they reached Africa. One researcher points out that update kits were distributed to put the new intercom in the older tanks, and it seems the headphones were replaced also.
So, there’s an opportunity for someone to study African photos and figure this out.
David
A very fine job indeed! As well as the orange headphones, there are a number of detail points from this early stage of the war that are not widely known. In the interests of historical accuracy I would offer the information that the tank would almost certainly have had splodges of brown cammo paint (very hard to see on old photographs), and leather Y straps were rarely if ever seen on German infantrymen during the Polich campaign.
