Product Features and Details
Model: Each REI Military Model is professionally hand-painted and thus highly unique. Each set is painted in authentic wehrmacht winter camouflage liveries, and each one is disassembled, masked, and airbrushed before being reassembled for the final touches. You'll find such features as carefully weathered and painted side frames, painted deck boards which includ wooded chalks and more. For this REI set we used a Artitec Tiger I and a Artitec six axle flat car painted in a winter camoflage. Flat car is a highly detailed model, it has complete undercarriage detail, deck details and comes equipped with NEM 362 coupler pockets. This is a unique model that will make a great addition to any collection.
** Please Note: The Artitec Military Transportation Chain Set 387.300 would add some additonal detail.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Our artist is a professional model builder and one of the world's premier commission scale model artists in North America. He is also a former US Army paratrooper and has garnered over 300 awards for his work. He has published dozens of articles in numerous scale modeling magazines and has painted box art buildups for most of the world's leading scale model companies. His work is found in private collections around the globe. This is a great opportunity to own a true piece of art by a master modeler.
Tiger I History: The most feared opponent of Allied tank crews was the Panzerkampfwagen VI or Tiger tank. Designed following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Tiger broke with the previous German doctrine of building well-balanced tanks in relation to protection, armament, and speed. This was due to the Panzer III and IV’s initial inability to effectively counter the better armed and armored Soviet T-34 and KV-1 tanks. The Tiger was armed with the Krupp-designed 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56 gun which could penetrate 83 mm of armor at 2,000 m, immediately making it a lethal tank killer. Its 100 mm frontal armor and 60-80 mm side armor made it nearly impervious to attack from medium to long range until more effective guns were mounted on Allied tanks late in the war. The Tiger was also easy to drive with a steering wheel with automatic steering as well as a semi-automatic pre-selector gearbox. All of these benefits came at a price however; the Tiger’s immense weight of 54 tons caused frequent engine, suspension, and gearbox breakdowns. Its weight and Schachtellaufwerk interleaved wheel configuration caused difficulties in muddy, off-road operations. Finally the intricate suspension, transmission, and electrical systems, requiring significantly more production time, as well as a steep price tap (four times that of a StuG III) meant that the Tiger could not be effectively mass-produced – only 1,347 Tigers were produced over two years.
PLEASE NOTE: These models are all handmade and painted which makes every one unique. This means the paint patterns may vary a little and the detail parts like sandbags, turret tracks, antennas, etc. may also be arranged differently. This was also the case in real life. These models are very prototypical.
