Bergepanther - Part 1

Fine Scale Factory (Kit#TL 018)

By Dave Showell

Introduction

One of the bitter lessonsthat the Wehrmacht encountered at Kursk was that they could nolonger count on holding the battlefield and recovering theirdamaged tanks and vehicles at leisure. This problem wascompounded by the size and weight of the new Panther and Tigerwhich were rolling off the assembly lines. Three Famo recoveryvehicles were required to salvage one Tiger under idealconditions, and Famos were always in short supply and vulnerablein battlefield recovery situations. Part of the answer was theBergepanther. Appearing soon after the introduction of thePanther, they were based, initially, on "ausf D"vehicles returned to the factory for repairs. The turret wasremoved, a lightly armoured box with folding wooden sides wasadded, and a whopping big winch (windlass) was placed in thefighting compartment. The Bergepanther was capable of a 40 tonstraight pull or, using mechanical advantage and a spade attachedat the rear, 80 tons. To all accounts, this was an extremelysuccessful conversion, although there were never enough to goaround.

Fine Scale Factory, aproducer of extremely nice and often exotic small scale armour,provided this kit to Doug Chaltry for review on his site "Onthe Way!" To my great delight, Doug passed it to me to takea look at. Here is what I found.

FirstLook

As you will note from the photo,this is not a kit where you give the box a shake and out pops afinished model. It has a massive number of parts, moulded inbeige resin and metal. Parts are contained in three zip lockbags, two for metal parts and one for resin. The kit comes in asturdy card board box with shredded newspaper for packing. Inoticed only one minor bit of breakage (a crack in the boxstructure) but this was not a problem to fix. A photocopied sheetof instructions is included, with a short description (I think)in German and a number of "exploded" views.

The kit is extremely welldetailed, with full interior and a lot of small "bits andpieces". There is some resin flash to be trimmed off,however in a number of cases, such as the opening for the maincompartment, the engine compartment or the driver's area, this isdone on purpose to avoid, I assume, breakage of the hull. Thesmaller metal parts have a considerable amount of flash, whichtends to be thicker and harder to remove. The tracks, moulded inwhite metal, are really very nice - well detailed with teeth onthe inside. They do not seem to be a recast of the Revell tracks,although they may be based on them. The upper hull would seem tobe based on the ESCI Panther ausf A with considerable work doneto it. This has always seemed, to me, to be a bit wide, makingthe angled sides look slightly "off" - particularlywhen compared to the Revell or Hasagawa Panthers. I didn't thinkthis would detract from the overall model however. The lower hullis quite beautiful, with the interior moulded in place. Theengine, transmission and main work area, where the winch will go,is well cast. The fire walls are detailed as well. My copy seemedto have an ever-so-slight misalignment that made the enginecompartment look slightly askew compared to the rest of the hull,however this could just be an optical illusion.

Buildingthe Bergie

Let me state my prejudiceright off, I don't like working with metal. Part of this is badexperience with metal kits in the past and part of it is simpleinexperience with the medium. It should come as no surprise,therefore, that I had trouble with the all metal running gear ofthe kit.

When I first sat down towork on the kit, I was convinced that I was missing parts. Therewere nine outer wheels, eight middle but only two inner roadwheels. A quick check of the instruction sheet showed that itincluded full inner wheels but then I came to the realizationthat the instructions for this section were just a cut-and-pasteof the Revell kit instructions. In fact, when I began to dry fitthe wheels and their torsion bar extensions (more about theselater) I realized there was really no way you could fit innerwheels on. FSF had realized this (I assume) and only includedinner wheels for the very last position, where they might show.This was not reflected in the instructions. This issue resolved,I trimmed the white metal crank-shaped torsion bar extensions andbegan happily super gluing them in the holes provided on theresin lower hull. I then realized that all of the torsion barsprovided were the same size. I would have to cut half of themdown to accept the middle road wheels, which I did. However, onceall the cranks were on and I began to try to add the wheels, Ifound the joint between the resin and the metal wouldn't hold asI pressed the wheel on. I attempted to rectify the situation byswearing at the model and supergluing my fingers together, all tono avail. I then pulled off all of the cranks and glued theminstead to the wheels first. I still had the same problem ofattaching them to the resin hull, but I could cheat by alsogluing the inner side of the outer wheels to the face of themiddle ones. This inelegant approach seemed to work although Iwouldn't want to try dropping the model very hard onto a table.Some of you may be wondering "Why is he using super glueinstead of two part epoxy?" The answer is, I never thoughtof it. I can, however, recommend not using super glue.

With the road wheels inplace (I left the drive and idler wheel off, knowing I would haveto bend the metal tracks around later), I turned to the tracks.Here lies a problem. The lower hull is moulded with the hulloverhang in place. Revell got around this by having the trackassembly as a separate unit which you slid up to the overhangonce all the tracks were on. FSF requires you to put the uppertracks on by sliding them into place sideways - an extremelydifficult trick given the nice teeth on the inside of the track.I accomplished this by carving off the inside inner teeth - wherethey would have to slide over a road wheel - and jamming theminto place. I next turned to the drive wheels and idlers. Themetal track bent around the idlers very nicely, although theteeth kind of bunch up. The drive wheel was a different story.There must be some way to fit the track over the teeth but Icouldn't seem to do it. I ended up carving the teeth off and thenbending the track around (the coward's way out). I figured Icould fix any problems by using mud (the other coward's way out).Having done this, I was able to finish the tracks with a minimumof trimming and fudging. A couple of nasty gaps magicallyappeared once I was finished but, hey, that's what mud is for,right? (see Coward #2, above). As well, because of the eyeballmethod of sizing the torsion bar extensions, my drive wheel endedup to close to the hull side. I had to carve the tracks a bit toget them on the front. The result is, from the front, the trackslook just a bit "pigeon toed".

Having bodged my waythrough the running gear, I now heaved a sigh of relief andstarted on the "real" model. I decided to go with anapproximation of red primer for the floor and half-way up thesides of the vehicles interior, and the engine compartment. Therest of the sides I painted ivory. I then dirtied it up using adry brushing of black and some lead pencil work. The transmissionand radio I did in coal black (slightly shiny) since apparentlythat was common on German vehicles. The engine I finished in flatblack. All the black items were then lightly dry brushed withlight grey to bring out the detail. The winch, which is abeautiful moulding, was finished in a similar fashion, with thecable picked out in dark grey with highlighting of orangey red tosimulate rust.

I then turned to theinstructions to start figuring where all the little metal partsshould go ... hmmmm. In the original copy of this document, itmay have been clear i) which part was which, and ii) where allthose little arrows were going, but in my copy the instructionsweren't much help. For example, in the engine compartment therewere a couple of little do-hickies which were labelled somethinglike "kuhlwasser something". However, the picture gaveme no hint about what parts might form the water cooler thingieand absolutely no clue as to where they might be stuck. I decidedto leave them off, since I was building the engine hatches closed(a shame really).

This pattern was repeatedeverywhere - an indistinct picture of a part with an arrowdisappearing into the picture of the kit. For exterior detail,there are at least a number of good references (Squadron'sPanther in Action is one) and there are a couple of 1/35thBergies displayed on Track Links which can be studied. The onlyplace I had real trouble with was attaching the spade. This is avery complicated assembly which requires considerable thought andtesting. In dry fitting the rest of the parts, I came across alittle problem with a tool bin fixed to the inner side of the boxstructure interfering with one of the wheels of the winch. MaybeI got it wrong, once again the instructions are not much help,but I had to carve away part of the box to clear the winch.

OverallImpressions

As you can guess from thephotos, I have not yet completed the kit. I will add a"Bergie Part II" article when things are complete. Myoverall impression of the kit is that it is an absolute"tour de force" of multi media kits. Despite thecriticisms I have made above, my feeling is that this kit willlook fantastic when it is complete. It is, however, not for theinexperienced or the faint of heart. It also requires aconsiderable investment of time. To bring the Bergepanther to thestate shown in the photos took approximately 20 hours (notincluding ungluing my fingers). This is far more than I usuallyspend. Finally, this is not an inexpensive kit. I have seen itadvertised in the US for around $35 US. This price reflects thehigh quality and detail of this kit, but quite a chunk of change,even for a resin kit.

References

Panther In Action ,Bruce Culver, Squadron/Signal Publications, Carrolton, TX.

German Tanks of WordWar Two , George Forty, Arms and Armour,London, 1987

Staytuned for Part 2 ...