Jakko’s 1:35 Dragon Sd.Kfz. 251

[Jakko]

TBH, the French “conversion” was my first idea, but when I looked for more photos some of the British ones also had a certain appeal. The ambulance would require converting the interior, though, so I decided against that in the end; the Polish one was my main alternative choice, but in the end I decided the French one would be more interesting. There are plenty more photos of captured 251s to be found, BTW. This one is probably one of the most interesting, IMHO:



This is the early type of 251/9, with the 7.5 cm gun mounted low in the front plate rather than on top of it. Full British markings, an Allied trailer and even an M2 HB machine gun on a pintle mount added.

 

[Allen Dewire]

Nice work so far Jakko!!! Really like the grill work and the interior is coming along fine too.......I think the hardest thing to do if one did decide to build the 251/9, pictured above, would be the writing on the back doors of it. Would be cool though!!!.......

Prost
Allen

 

[Jakko]

If I had the AFV Club /9 kit instead of the Dragon one, I would have gone for that British vehicle The writing on the door is probably not that hard to do with a white pencil — the main difficulty would be getting it to look convincing, IMHO. Or you could just leave it off, because it wouldn’t have survived the first shower or major puddle anyway

 

[Panzerwrecker]

TBH, the French “conversion” was my first idea, but when I looked for more photos some of the British ones also had a certain appeal. The ambulance would require converting the interior, though, so I decided against that in the end; the Polish one was my main alternative choice, but in the end I decided the French one would be more interesting. There are plenty more photos of captured 251s to be found, BTW. This one is probably one of the most interesting, IMHO:

View attachment 463612

This is the early type of 251/9, with the 7.5 cm gun mounted low in the front plate rather than on top of it. Full British markings, an Allied trailer and even an M2 HB machine gun on a pintle mount added.

Great ref pic. I wonder what all that chalk scribbling had to say?

 

[Jakko]

Thanks for the liberation, well-wishes for the Allied troops and generic hellos, I’m guessing. That was usually the extent of the messages Belgian and Dutch people wrote on Allied vehicles at the time, anyway — this photo, if I’m not mistaken, was taken in Brussels soon after the city was liberated.

 

[Jakko]

Continuing to paint the interior, I first added some washes and drybrushings to the interior. I began with Mig olive drab wash, which I think is too green for American OD, but French was greener so I thought it might work. This was followed by drybrushing with Revell light olive, but I wasn’t convinced the shading and highlighting was sufficient, so I then added a thinned-down coat of Army Painter strong tone, which enhanced the shadows a bit, and then drybrushed again with the light olive.

After that, I began to add chipped paint:



I didn’t originally want to do it as heavily as this, but then I thought about it and figured: if you look at the state of paint on French houses, would they take that attitude to their military vehicles as well? Especially in a tropical climate that the paint was probably never really designed for …

This is all Mr. Hobby Color dark yellow applied with a fine brush, and obviously, the right-hand side still needs doing. When this is done I’ll need to use some more similar tones to vary the effect a bit, and maybe add lead red primer and possibly some bare metal in areas to enhance it.

The leather back rests will get a similar treatment but with brown instead of dark yellow.

 

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
Coming on nicely.

 

[Jim R]

Looking good Jakko. Any length of time in Indochina would not be kind on paint or anything else for that matter.

 

[Jakko]

Thanks Looking at the photo, though, it looks more like someone spilled a lot of mustard than chipped paint Luckily, in the flesh it’s not that bad.

 

[Mickc1440]

Sometimes pics aren't very forgiving but it looks really good.

 

[Jakko]

I hope, then, that it looks even better now and I didn’t make it worse



I used a light tan colour on the wooden slats to show the bare wood coming through, and some red lead colour in a couple of places where the paint might have worn down almost to the metal.

The back rests and front seats were painted by dabbing a few different (red)brown colours onto them with a thick, old and very worn brush, followed by painting chips of olive drab onto parts of them. The idea is to show that these soft parts had simply been sprayed OD with the rest of the interior, but the paint has largely flaked off because of the cushions flexing.

I think it will be a good idea to add another wash over all of this to tie it together more, though.

 

[Mini Me]

Looks much better to me.

 

[Jim R]

All looks very effective to me.

 

[Graeme C.]

Just had a catch up, coming along well Jakko, some nice adaptations for a French version.

 

[Jakko]

Now that my hand is mostly healed, and I have another model idea in mind that I really want to build, this one needs to get finished sometime soonish



Bloody track links … I chose the “Magic Tracks” because I figure the later type of track would be on this vehicle, but I suspect the early type on the sprues would actually be the easier one to clean up. Each link has two ejector pin markings on it, so those need to be filed down, which requires holding it between thumb and forefinger, filing one side flat, turning it around and filing the other. With links that are 8 mm wide and 5.5 mm long, that’s hard enough on the joints in my fingers that I can manage ten to fifteen or so before I had better stop before the ache gets too bad.

But the interior is now pretty much done:



I glued one of the kit’s MP 40s on the radio operator’s side, a Bronco Sten Mk. II on the driver’s, and three Tamiya MAS 39 rifles in the left-hand rack. There is room for four, but the bottom one doesn’t want to go in (not enough room to manoeuvre it in with tweezers) and in any case, it’s almost invisible there anyway once the hull top is on:



In that hull top, I also added the driver’s visors’ armoured windshields:



I painted their frames on the sprue and masked their outsides before glueing them into place. I’m not sure you would want these in Indochina, as they would block most of the breeze you would get through those flaps, but they look nice on the model

Now I need to mask the hole in the roof from the inside before glueing the hull top to the lower.

 

[The Smythe Meister]

Looking great Jakko
It's all very nice of course,BUT,I particularly like the way you've done the rifles... They're excellent mate

 

[scottie3158]

Looking good Jakko. Those links sound like a pain.

 

[Jakko]

I particularly like the way you've done the rifles... They're excellent mate

Thanks, but it was really a very simple paint job: matt black for the metal parts, drybrushed with gun metal (I should have used Humbrol Polished Steel, really), then I painted the wood in Tamiya XF-64 Red Brown followed by a layer of Army Painter Soft Tone (that’s a translucent brown) to give it some depth and a varnish-like sheen.

Those links sound like a pain.

I’ve built worse But I do think that the other ones are actually easier to clean up, with a few pips to cut away rather than ejector pin markings to file off.

 

[Jakko]

Now the top is on, plus some more bits, it suddenly looks like a 251:



The main two hurdles still left to tackle, in addition to the track, are the cooling air louvres on the sides of the nose and the antenna mounting.

 

[Tim Marlow]

Starting to look the right shape Jakko