Product Features and Details
Model: Each REI Military Model is professionally hand-painted and thus highly unique. Each set is painted in authentic camouflage patterns, 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 Panter 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.
Panther History: The Panzerkampfwagen V or Panther was the best all-around tank design of the Second World War. It was designed as a direct response to the Soviet T-34 tank which had proved the better of the Panzer III and IV. Produced by the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG (or MAN) beginning in December 1942, the Panther was only slightly more expensive than the up-gunned Panzer IV and less than half the price of the Tiger heavy tank. It was well-protected in the front: 60 mm of armor on the hull front and 80 mm on the turret front. It was armed with a high velocity 7.5 cm KwK 42 (L/70) gun which could penetrate 89 mm of armor sloped at 30° from 2,000 m. It was powered by a 690 hp Maybach V12 engine that gave it a top road speed of 34 mph. The Panther’s shortcomings were that it was mechanically complex (resulting in frequent breakdowns due to the increasing poor quality of materials due to Allied bombing raids) and its side armor was relatively weak; only 45 mm of armor on the turret sides and 40 mm on the hull. Panther crews constantly had to be aware of enemy flanking fire. From the front however, the Panther was invincible to most Allied medium tanks at medium-to-long range. The Panther bested the T-34 and subsequent T-34/85 and its only equal in the West was the Sherman Firefly. It was the second most-produced German tank of the war (over 6,700) after the Panzer IV but ultimately this proved to not be enough to stem the tide on two fronts. This Panther has Hinterhalt-Tarnung or Ambush Camouflage – a base coat of Dunkelgelb with Rotbraun and Olivegrün stripes with the addition of opposite color dots. This camouflage was supposed to simulate the effect of sunlight shining through brush and forest. It is covered with Zimmerit anti-magnetic mine coating. Zimmerit was a paste, hardened with blowtorches, applied to German armored vehicles between December 1943 and September 1944 to prevent magnetic mines from sticking to armored hulls.
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.
