I had on my desk a rare tank (another one!) produced by our Heer46 friends. I have tried to paint it with a common line tritonal camo.
The Bergetiger is one of this tanks showed in very few pics. It’s a german armored vehicle based on the Tiger I chassis. Only 1, 2 or perhaps 3 units were made in 1944, and only one vehicle was found, in Italy, without a gun and with some strange apparel in the turret.
At first, the soldiers think it was a recovery vehicle, so they named it as the Bergetiger. The ‘Berge’ prefix is the name the allies gave to the recovery versions of other tanks. Some examples are the ‘Bergepanther’ or the ‘Bergepanzer’.
But the real role of the Bergetiger is still a mistery. It’s almost certain that it wasn’t a recovery vehicle, based on assumptions that the tow cable was too thin and the crane was too weak. This two things couldn’t tow the weight of a tank. Other people think that it was used to place explosives and these kind of works, like mine-clearing or lifting big obstacles.
This is the best explanation of the Bergetiger’s possible role. But it’s quite clear that the tank wasn’t a recovery vehicle.
Talking about the 15mm model, it’s made of two parts: a Battlefront chassis and a Heer46 turret. All is made of metal, instead of the resin tanks that Heer46 produce. Detail is superb and no 3D printing lines are seen in the model (that’s because it’s not made in a 3D printer 🙂 ). The only things I added were the tow cable and the little piece below the crane, were the cable ends.
I have used Tamiya paints to create a very common tritonal camo with lines. I haven´t seen any real Bergetiger, so I’m painting this way because I imagine it that way. The recovered Bergetiger in Italy was painted in plain Dunkelgelb and without any marks, symbols or numbers, as we could see in the previous pics.
So here are the pics of the model after priming, painting the camo and placing the (imaginary) decals. I’m now doing some washes… so stay tuned for the next step!
View the other part of the Work in Progress: WIP – Heer46 Bergetiger – Part II Finished