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 Elephant 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.
Elephant History: The Elefant (German for "elephant") was a heavy Jagdpanzer (tank destroyer) used by German Wehrmacht Panzerjäger during World War II. Ninety-one units were built in 1943 under the name Ferdinand, after its designer Ferdinand Porsche, using tank hulls produced for the Tiger I tank design abandoned in favour of a Henschel design.
In January to April 1944, Ferdinands received modifications and upgrades. They were renamed Elefant in May 1944. The official German designation was Panzerjäger Tiger.
Porsche GmbH had manufactured about 100 chassis for their unsuccessful proposal for the Tiger tank, the "Porsche Tiger", in the Nibelungenwerk factory in Sankt Valentin, Austria. Both the successful Henschel proposal and the Porsche design used the same Krupp-designed turret—the Henschel design had its turret more-or-less centrally located on its hull, while the Porsche design placed the turret much closer to the front of the superstructure. Since the competing Henschel Tiger design was chosen for production, the Porsche chassis were no longer required for the Tiger tank project. It was therefore decided that the Porsche chassis were to be used as the basis of a new heavy panzerjäger, Ferdinand, mounting Krupp's newly developed 88 mm (3.5 in) Panzerjägerkanone 43/2 (PaK 43) anti-tank gun. This precise long-range weapon was intended to destroy enemy tanks before they came within their own range of effective fire.
The Ferdinand was intended to supplant previous light panzerjägers, such as the Marder II and Marder III, in the offensive role. A similar gun was used in the lightly armored Hornisse (later known as Nashorn) tank destroyer, built at the same time.
