Tiger I

Manufacturer: Revell AG.

• Tiger I Ausf. H Kit #03108
• Tiger I Ausf. E Kit #03116

The Revell Tiger I Ausf. Hwas the first Revell kit I ever built (see Review ), and it set the tone for Revell'sfuture kits, as far as my expectations of quality and accuracy.This was their first really nice kit (the earlier Panthers arepertty well done, but with some notable errors), and set a newtrend for high-quality small scale armor models. All of theirlater models are spectacular kits, and these two Tiger tankstotally blow away the competition (the Hasegawa Tiger series).

The two kits share themajority of parts. The Ausf. E kit contains an additional sprueof steel wheels, and the two kits each contain a unique spruewhich includes parts for each specific version (pictured below).These first three sprues show all of the shared parts.

My Tiger Comparison article that compares the Revell and Hasegawa kits pretty well describes the strength of these two kits. One of my few complaints about this kit is the heavy gun barrel, which is too massive. Luckily, ARMO has recently released a replacement barrel of turned aluminum.

The tracks are some of thefinest plastic link-and-length tracks I have seen.

This sprue shows the partsunique to the Ausf. H. As you can see, it has the specialized airfilters, squared muffler guards, cylindrical cupola, and thenarrow front mudguards unique to the Tigers seen in North Africa.The right half of the turret includes a locating hole for themachine pistol port cover.

This sprue contains theparts unique to the Ausf. E. It has the wider front fenders, thesmaller cupola with periscopes, the rounded muffler shields, AAmachinegun and mount, and the right side of the turret has anopening for the escape hatch.

These are the steel wheelsincluded with the Ausf. E kit.

The decals on the left arefor the Ausf. H, and the set on the right is for the Ausf. E.Like other Revell decals, they are very thin, matte, andwell-printed (this set of Ausf. H decals is printed in register,but the set included with the kit I built was not). Apparently,new research has proven the the red No. 142 markings shouldactually be only white outlines.

As I mentioned in theAusf. H Review, that kit allows for the construction of only avery small number of unique Tigers (about 3% of the total Tigerproduction). The Ausf. E kit allows for much greater latitude.Unfortunately, about one third of the Tigers produced had turretand hull details intermediate between the two, so you mustpurchase both kits in order to build such a Tiger. Numerousetched brass and resin detail and conversion sets are nowavailable for these kits.