Wirbelwind

Primary Manufacturer:Al.By (Kit No. CK01), plus many others.

By Dave Showell

As a small scale builder,of all the kits that ESCI put out during its prolific lifetime,the one that attracted me the most was its Flak Panzer IVWirbelwind. It was exotic without being just a prototype and wasused during the declining years of the Reich when desperation ledto many innovative (if sometimes not very practical) vehicles. Initself, the Wirbelwind was quite successful, able to put up awall of 20 mm shells for the protection of columns. Its thinturret armour offered at least some protection to the crew whileit was able to keep up with other tanks over broken ground. Therewere never enough, of course, to combat the increasing allied airsupremacy - a problem made worse by chaotic production channelsin Germany.

The main problems of theESCI kit, if you can find a copy of it now, are thickness of theturret sides and the 20 mm gun barrels. In this, ESCI wasinhibited by the technology of injection moulding. Also, thereare a few problems with the ESCI Panzer IV chassis. While you canthin down the sides of the turret, to me it always looks toochunky. The more recent Hasagawa kit of the Wirbel suffers frommuch the same problem (plastic thickness) and the"unsatisfying" rubber tracks. The actual quad 20 mm inthe turret of the Has. kit is probably on par with the ESCIversion, although I prefer the latter.

Having both the mainstream kits, I was surprised to learn that Al-by of France hadproduced a Wirbelwind "Combi-kit." Combi-kits contain afull, injection moulded kit (usually by ESCI) plus a resinupgrade to create a new version. Currently they seem to have goneout of production as Al-by's supply of ESCI has run out. The WWCombi-kit consists of a full ESCI Panzer IV (in the originalplastic bag and with hard track) and a baggy of resin and turnedbrass. Obviously it was Al-by's intention to fix the mainshortcomings of the ESCI kit - the resin pieces seem to be basedon the ESCI but improved. The turret walls, for example, arepaper thin. The 20 mm guns are remoulds of the ESCI ones, but thegun barrels have been removed and holes provided for positioningthe turned brass barrels (also provided in the Combi-kit). Allthe other ESCI WW parts are reproduced in resin, although some ofthem have also been thinned down.

While the Combi-kit offersa solution to most of the turret problems, the ESCI Panzer IVchassis is still not quite right. The Hasagawa kit is equallyunsatisfying in my view (even without the crappy tracks). Theanswer? Well, fortunately Revell saved the day by issuing theirexcellent Panzer IV H just in time to meet my need. The Panzer IVH and J are truly masterpieces of small scale model engineering.The moulding is very detailed and the tracks are great. The onlyproblem I considered was whether the Germans ever used the ausf Hfor Wirbelwinds. As far as I can tell, most Wirbelwinds wereremanufactured from damaged tanks returned from the front. Thisis why in photos you will often (but not always) find zimmerit onthe chassis but none on the turret. I know of at least oneWirblewind photo where there is no zimmerit on the hull. The Hhas no secondary muffler for the turret traverse engine (deletedafter the G) and, at least later, all steel return rollers.Eventually I came to the conclusion that a Wirbelwind based on anH was possible and decided to proceed.

So with four kits in frontof me, I set out to build one really good one. I started byassembling the hull and running gear. First, because with theAl-by/ESCI kit you can look through the turret to the floor ofthe tank, I felt I had to put something in. I kind of cheated bytaking the interior of a Nitto 1/76 Panzer IV and sliding it intothe larger Revell hull (the Nitto has the drive train going frontto back and the patterned sub floor with cut-out for therevolving turret floor, absent of course in the Wirbelwind). Itturned out later that it was highly unlikely that anyone couldsee the stuff inside, but hey, I know it's there.

Turning to the runninggear, I became aware that later Panzer IV's had two differenttypes of bogey wheel. One type has what seems to be a pressedsteel hub with recesses where the bolts attach it to thesuspension unit. The other has a flat ring around the outside ofthe hub through which the bolts attach (i.e. no recesses).Hasagawa has the former while Revell has the latter style. Thephotos I have of the Wirbelwind indicate that the Hasagawa oneswere more likely to be found on that tank. I therefore used theHasagawa bogeys on the Revell hull (the holes are a bit too bigfor the pegs but with some care it works out okay). I encounteredno trouble lining up the Revell track with the Hasagawa bogeys.The Revell drive and return rollers are better moulded than theHasagawa, and I think have to be used in order to fit the hardtrack properly. With the running gear complete, I then painted it(Humbrol 83 - Ochre) and weathered the track appropriately usinga soft pencil. Later I went back and used a darker shade ofyellowish brown (Humbrol 84 darkened with Humbrol Earth) aroundareas I would later highlight to give depth to the kit.

Next, I built the upperhull pretty much straight out of the box. I kept the hull hatchesclosed so I didn't have to worry about the interior driver orradio operator's position. I did have to fill the holes for the"schurzen" supports with contour putty, as well.

Moving on to the turret, Iassembled the quad 20 mm. The one drawback to the gun is therather crappy aiming reticule which was supplied with both theESCI and Al-by kits. It is a flat, thick, solid disk. I thinnedit down and hollowed it out but it still looks lousy. What itreally needs is an etched brass aiming reticule. I've seen someof these somewhere (maybe on Sandman and Overlord's site) buthaven't managed to get one. Care has to be taken lining up theturned brass barrels - if one is out of alignment it really showsup once you place the gun in the turret. The holes in the resinguns are not quite centred, so it can be a bit of a struggle toget them all straight. I then painted the gun (gun mountingOchre, gun and barrels a dark "gun metal" colour. Themagazines inserted into the sides of the gun I painted asemi-gloss black. I used a soft lead pencil again to indicatewear on exposed bits as a result of use.

So far, things had goneswimmingly. The turret itself, however, was a different story.One of the drawbacks to thinly moulded resin is that it warps.When I joined the top half of the turret to the bottom, thewarping in the bottom half resulted in a deep "wow" onone side, where the bottom plate undercut the top plate. I onlynoticed the problem after having super glued the two partstogether, so straightening the lower half under water was not anoption. Actually, given that the thin resin would probably havelost its shape completely, I doubt if the "warm andstraighten" approach would have been a good idea. Instead, Iused contour putty to reduce the dented-in effect as much aspossible. Held up to the light the "fix" is stillnoticeable but not blatant. The Al-by turret base is a littlesmaller than the Revell turret ring so a little care is requiredto ensure that it is centred properly. Before gluing the gun intothe turret, I added some gear around the interior - a Sturmgewher44 from the Fujimi infantry set and some personal gear from theRevell soft plastic German Artillery set (a very useful packagefor spare gear). Once again this is difficult to see once the gunis in place.

I painted the model withHumbrol 83 Ochre, then once gain used a darker shade around areasthat I wanted to stand out. The green camouflage is Humbrol 159olive drab (I think) lightly dry brushed on in a featheredpattern. The brown is Testors Brown also dry brushed on. For me,the key to German three colour camo is subtlety - you want it toblend in under a coat of dust, not stand out too much. I used adarker green and a darker brown to outline bolts and otherprotrusions on the hull. Finally, using a very light off whiteHumbrol paint (Humbrol 71 - could be canvas or buff?) I drybrushed a light covering of dust. This also tends to"touch" the very tops of bolts, handles, edges andother protrusions, highlighting them nicely.

My final steps were to:add a stretched sprue antenna to the rear, port side using theantenna mount from the Hasagawa kit; add one spare bogey and ajerry can to the storage rack on the port side; add a wirehandle/crank to the jack; put a rolled tarp on the rear deck(Leva); and add the long rectangular spare barrel cases to bothsides of the hull. The Al-by recasts of the latter have handlesat each end, so you have to make certain that they are right sideup. These barrel cases are kind of curious in their attachment. Ihave to assume they were welded horizontally above the airintakes to provide a little extra space to the back deck so thatcrew member passing ammo or someone with a rangefinder would havemore room. There was no photo evidence of markings so I left thetank unmarked.

The base is a piece of"bass" wood from the local Michaels Craft store. I puton flocking to represent dirt and scattered grass, glued down thetank and added the anti-tank barriers from an ESCI accessoriesset. About two weeks later I took it down from a shelf and found,to my disgust, that the "bass" wood had warped up likea potato chip - it was really bad! So I removed the tank andtossed the base to the side, thinking I'd find another baselater. A week later, I picked it up and found that the base hadreturned to its original shape - no warping at all! I haven't yetre-glued the tank, I'm waiting to see if it warps again at thenext full moon.

So, in total, I used partsfrom five different kits: the Revell Panzer IV H, the HasagawaWirblewind, the ESCI Wirblewind (used a couple of parts from theold plastic version, like the ammo racks with spare magazines),the interior stuff from the Nitto Panzer IV, and the Resin kitfrom Al-by.