1/48th King Tiger With Porche Turret

The Panzerkampfwagen VI-B Tiger is also known under the informal name Königstiger (German for the Bengal Tiger). It is often literally translated by the Americans as King Tiger, and Royal Tiger by the British. It is often feared by the Allies due to it's formidable Type 43 L71 88mm high velocity main gun and its 100mm thick frontal armour and 80mm thick side panel armour. The Porsche turret had a very distinctive shape with a rounded front section and narrow shell as compared with the rather angular Henschel turret. Porsche produced 50 turret for it's version before the official adoption of the Hanschel turret. Evaluation had revealed that the Porsche turret lacked armour thickness and required complex tooling due to its rounded contour sculpturing.

The model I am presenting here is a Tamiya 1/48th scale German King Tiger Porsche Turret. It is built straight from the box with resin zimmerit from Atak and a short length of bras wire for the headlights.

The base colour was sprayed with Gunze Sangyo Mr. Colour's Dark Yellow lightened with Sail Colour. After that, the green was sprayed on (I cannot remember the name of the colour.), again lightened with sail. Finally, the brown was sprayed using Gunze Sangyo's Mr Colour's Red Brown lightened with the base colour. Washes of Yellow Orche oil paint was applied to the entire model, followed by Sap Green on the green bands and Burnt Sienna on the brown bands as filters. The purpose is the make the colour richer.

After the model is completely dry, a gloss coat was sprayed on the model and decals were applied. After that, a Matt coat was applied and the weathering process begins. I first washed the entire model with diluted Raw Umber. Then pin point washed of a mixture of the Raw Umber and Black oil paints were applied to all the corners. This followed by some streaking and dirt stains. When that was done, light dry brush of Yellow Orche mixed with White was applied on the raised area to bring out the details further.

The mud is a mixture of sand, wall putty, white glue, static glass, Tamiya's Matt Black and Buff (which is a mistake as the correct colour should be Flat Earth). Several coats of Raw Umber wash was applied to give it the appearance. Finally, the tracks were again dry brushed with Black oil paint.