Flammpanzer B2(F)

I actually completed this model in September, but delayed posting this post as I wanted to surprise Martin during our Arnhem game.

The idea for this project came from the book "German Armoured Units at Arnhem", which Martin lent me before we started the campaign. I have always like the way the Germans made use of captured armoured vehicles, and we did not have any flamethrower units in our collection at that time, so when I saw the Flammpanzer B2(F) I decided I would try to build one.

The model is from Trumpeter and is detailed and easy to build. The only major inaccuracy was with the driver's vision port on the left, which required some cutting to make it look like the original.

The resin conversion bits came from Modelltrans, which I bought through Lonewulf Models. The conversion bits consisted of the large fuel tank at the back of the tank, the flamethrower mount which replaced the 75mm gun on the original tank/model, an extra vision port above the flamethrower, and a piece of spare track to place over the front left of the hull. Attaching the resin bits required shaving off the rivets on the areas which the bits went over, and for the extra vision port also the removal of part of the driver's vision port, but once attached there was only minimal filling of gap with some epoxy putty required.

Front view showing the flamethrower, the additional vision port, and the spare tracks from the converion kit.

I was undecided on whether to remove the antenna on the back of the tank since some pictures showed the tank with it and some without, but eventually I decided to remove it and cover the surface over the area with an ammo box. The tracks were single lengths of rubber and I had some difficulty with them, but I suppose it was better than having to glue individual links.

For the painting I decided to go for a three-tone camouflage on a tank fielded in Holland instead of the one shown in the book, which frankly didn't look 'cool'. I also chose a different base yellow (Tamiya Light Sand instead of Dark Yellow) and green (Racing Green instead of Olive Drab) for this model as the photos of other models I saw tended to go for brighter colours. I sprayed the patterns on using a stencil of an irregular pentagon cut in a sheet of card. The green looked too bright and glossy at first, but a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone solved that problem.

Once painted I did some weathering as per my previous projects, but also heavily rusted the exhaust tubes at the back, which in this video of a surviving Char B looks like something which happened even to a well-maintained tank.

Rear view showing the fuel tank and the heavy rusting on on the exhaust pipes. 

For the decals I used the ones I had left over on the Peddinghaus Normandy Tanks sheet.

Over all I am quite pleased with how the model turned out. It performed very well against Martin's Paras yesterday (report soon, I promise) as they did not have a six-pounder with them, but I think I may have very few opportunities to field it again in a historical context..