Tristar Models
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Initially I thought a kit of this early Panzer IV would have limited appeal, I certainly wasn't that interested in it. But after some research the subject began to interest me more. According to Panzer Tracts No. 4 (1) there were 42 of the Ausf. B produced, with the first five of these having the wider Ausf. A hull. This kit represents the earlier type, the later type had a small rain shield above the driver's view port, which was also back fitted to earlier tanks. The later Ausf. C, of which there were 134 built was almost identical to the Ausf. B. Later in there service these vehicles where back-fitted with stowage boxes on the rear turret, additional 30mm armour plates on the hull front, a Notek lamp amongst other small details. So this kit can be built to represent around 170 vehicles with a few detail changes. Good reference will enable one to identify specific tanks at various points in their service to model. An interesting vehicle would be those still employed by the 21st Panzer Division in Normandy 1944. There is a photograph of one of these tanks, an Ausf. B, in "PzKpfw IV in action" (2), page 9. The Kit Tristar initially released a Pz. IV Ausf. C first (kit no.35-017) as a limited edition, and followed shortly with this Ausf. B. The kits are very similar so this review can also apply to their earlier Ausf. C. The new kit has a new sprue fixing a few minor problems that were uncovered in the Ausf. C. I am currently building the Ausf. C kit in my Blog "Tristar Panzer IV Ausf. C", much, if not all, of the assembly advice in my blog will apply to this Ausf. B kit too. Moulding is good. There is no flash, as can be expected in a new kit. On my Ausf. C sample kit there were a few areas of "short shot", this occurs when the molten styrene does not fill all areas of the mould. Tristar have informed me that "This is the injection problem at the first lot order because some grease fill into the mould during production. The plastic cannot run through the moulding so that the lower hull front armour plate is little bit lower. This is not the problem of the mould and this is quite difficult to found out during production period.". This problem was not evident with this Ausf. B kit. Parts Photographs
Suspension Tristar has included part of their "German Pz.kpfw.IV Wheels Set" kit. (see Saul Garcia's review: http://www.track-link.net/reviews/k1516 for more details.) Generally this is a very good set of Panzer IV suspension units. I have assembled one set of these bogies, they go together well with no problems. One thing to look out for is the position of the leaf spring on the trailing swing arm, make sure that the swing arm supports the spring. There is slight gap left between the rubber tyre and the wheel hub, I managed to fill this in with some Mr. Surfacer. Regarding the "CONTINENTAL" logo and serial numbers on each tyre, I feel this is overdone an sanding it down a little goes a long way to matching the appearance in photographs. A final word of advice: there are several extra suspension components left over so be careful to use the correct ones. A set of Kgs.6110/380/120 38cm (that's 38cm wide track pins on 36cm tracks) individual track-links are included. They are well cast and accurate, but unfortunately they have the higher guide horns that were more common on the Ausf. D. Model Kasten make the only accurate set of these early 36cm tracks, (kit no.SK-57) that include the shorter guide horns. Note that ModelKasten refer to these as "36cm", this refers to the width of the actual track-link, the track pin was 38cm wide... confused? The kit tracks could be used as I would imagine tanks in the later stages of their service would have been re-tracked with the higher guide horn tracks (Kgs.6111/380/120). The kit tracks could also be used if the guide horn is filed down too, which would be a tedious task to be sure. One problem with the kit tracks however, which I really don't like, is the hole in the guide horn is not uniform, it is thicker at the top and front. Finally, the best of both worlds... one could purchase a set of ModelKasten SK-57, which include both tall and short guide horns, use them with the taller guide horns on a Pz. IV Ausf. D and then use the leftover set of shorter guide horns on this kit. Hull The lower hull consists of a bottom part, two sides and a front and rear plate. There are also two internal braces for strengthening. I found assembly a little tricky, after several dry runs with tape and rubber bands the following sequence worked the best. I first cleaned up the bottom (part F-1), it was a little warped but this will correct itself as the hull is assembled. I was careful to clean the edges that mate to the hull sides, not doing so will result in a gap. I then added the two internal braces (parts E-1), these fit snuggly without much play but it is important to make sure they sit perpendicular to the hull floor. I sealed the joins with Cyanoacrylate (CA) glue (popularly know as "Krazy Glue"). Next the side walls were cleaned up, again it is very important to remove any leftover sprue attachment nubs as these will interfere with the fit. Now these where attached to the lower hull I applied glue ONLY to the internal brace arms and let this set. Next, after this had set, I glued in the front and rear. Included in the kit are a set of additional armour plates for the lower front hull parts K-2 the armour and K-1 the cap. The instructions indicate that this is to be installed but only indicate that K-1 is for the late version. So only K-1 should be installed for the late version too. I think this is the so-called "face-hardened" armour. This would be typical of later vehicles as used in Russia also rear turret bins and the Notek lights would be typical for these vehicles too. I installed this armour to my tank. There are two small locating cut outs along to top of the armour (K-2) that K-1 fits into, these are too big and were still visible after the cap is in placed. I filled these in with small bits of sheet styrene first before installing the armour. I fitted the glacis plate at this time too. The glacis is nice and featured the correct flanges around the transmission and brake hatches. However the actual glacis is too thick so to be accurate the whole part should be sanded down and the flanges replaced. There are excellent photographs of these hatches open that show the flanges in Tanks in Detail vol. 1 (3) page 29, this is an Ausf. E but the Ausf. B is similar. Separate parts are included for all engine, transmission and crew hatches. With the exception of the engine hatches they are all detailed on both sides. The brake inspection hatches even have the little locking levels as separate items. Two different styles of these brake hatches are included too. The vision ports are separate too, the side ones even have clear styrene vision blocks. The fenders are integrally moulded to the upper hull, with the sponson floors moulded to the hull side walls. The fenders are a little thick but well moulded. The tread pattern is the more common cross-hatch, which is a big improvement over the earlier Ausf. D "dot" pattern. The various tool stowage fittings are integrally moulded too. I prefer either photo-etched, scratch-built or to thin down the kit's fenders. This is difficult with this kit since the fenders are moulding in place. Since I planned to use the new Aber fenders from this kit I cut off the kit fenders and sponson floors. Not an easy task and I would have preferred that Tristar engineer the fenders as separate items, much like Italeri did with their Panzer IV kits. Turret Based on the drawings in the Achtung Panzer book the turret overall it very good, the front being a little wide. Comparing it visually with photographs the turret look very good, one would be hard pressed to see any differences, I certainly can't. The parts consist of a rear, sides and top rear in one part. To this the front top is glued. I took care to clean up thee edges of the top plate as the fit is very snug. Attached to this top plate is the armoured flange for the little hatch just in front of the cupola, this needs some extra attention to remove the little bit of flash around the bolt tabs. The actual armoured part suffered from some shrinkage, which was filled in with Mr. Surfacer 500 (see photo.) One the top had set the bottom was glued in place, the turret side walls should be held in place while the glue set. The front armour plate was added next. Finally the two little triangular armour pieces where added, these parts really impressed me as they literally "snapped" into place like Lego. I did run some liquid glue in the inside to set them in place. Once assembled the turret is quite sturdy. No filling was needed on the joins although I did add a bit of Latex paint to fill the joins up a little. I use Latex paint since it does not affect the styrene so excess can be wiped off, (I learned this from an aircraft modeller who use this technique to fill in deep panel lines.) One difficulty I had with the turret assembly was the strip at the back beneath the commander's cupola (part. L-16), it was difficult to "bend carefully" to get a good fit. I resorted to making a more pliable one from 0.020 sheet strip and gluing the bolts to it. A basic interior is included for the turret. It consists of the main gun assembly with spent cartridge basket. The turret floor along with seats for the commander, gunner and load are included. For those wishing to further detail the interior the are good references in the refs.4 and 5. R&J Products also make an early Panzer IV interior, I have it but have not tried to fit in into this Tristar kit. All of the various turret hatches can be shown open, they all have good internal detail, with the exception of the commander's cupola which is missing the very evident vision blocks. The main gun mantlet is the kit's poorest area. There are two problem, the shape of the opening is a little "off", this was corrected in the Ausf. B kit release. The second problem is that the ridged pattern on the mantlet housing sides is missing. The pattern was to break up any shots that hit this area. It is a difficult thing to replace in 1-35th scale, mostly because clear close-up photographs are difficult yo find... maybe that's a bonus though :-) DML have this simulated well so borrowing a copy from their Ausf.B or C is an option. I chose to scratch-build my own. Details, Tools, etc. The pioneer tools are well done and feature realistic mounting brackets moulding in styrene with photo-etched clasp handles. For example, the gun cleaning rods consists of the two-piece rod with separate mounting bases and clasps, all in styrene! These are simply amazing, the best tank tools I've seen. As mentions before, all the vision flaps are separate too, with internal details, so they can be displayed open. The smoke candle rack is well done, it includes fine photo-etched chains. The tow points are also well done and include these chains too. A flexible metal wow cable is included, the ends are moulded in styrene. The completed tow cable is to be wrapped around its mounts on the rear hull plate. These "L" shaped mounts are moulded in styrene, as a precaution I would replace these with brass rod, to give them more strength. Marking Options The Ausf. C was introduced into service in 1938. It was fielded in Poland, France, the Balkan campaign (Yugoslavia and Greece) and the early part of the Russian campaign. A few survived in service longer, in Normandy as I mentioned above. I have never seen one in service with the DAK in North Africa however. These early tanks would most likely have been in the dark grey/brown very early war scheme. Tristar's offers three early war schemes of overall dark grey, I would have thought that these should be grey/brown. Cartograf decals are provided for the following tanks:
Paint references for the above are given in Tamiya acrylics and Gunze Mr. Colour and Aqueous Model Color. Unfortunately the marking diagrams do not specify which kit options belong with which set of markings. So referring to references is essential to get this right. I am not aware of any specific after-market decal sets for the Pz. IV Ausf. B but Archer make a good selection of generic Wehrmacht markings. Conclusions It's a shame that these Tristar Panzer IV kits are being over shadowed by their Dragon counterparts because I think they are a superior kits. While more concentration from the modeller is needed to assemble these kits they do feature more accurate dimensions, better finesse of detail and sharper moulding than their DML counterparts. Apart from the tracks' guide horn problem and caution about the lower hull assembly, I totally recommend this kit. This kit was supplied to Track-Link by Tristar Models for review purposes. Suggestions to Tristar I have a few suggestions for Tristar.
References
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