Even More 28mm Late WWII German Armor

I'm continuing to clear my work-in-progress queue. This is the balance of the German armor from my previous WIP post. These are the vehicles that needed to wait for crew figures to be painted to be considered finished. This batch also includes two conversions, each of which can serve double duty on the gaming table.

First up is my Flakpanzer 38(t). This is a conversion of a Warlord Hetzer III combined with a Warlord Flak 38 AA gun and a shed load of scratch building. I posted WIP photos of this which show off the scratch built parts better earlier on this blog. That post also contains links to the thread about the project over at the official Warlord forums. This was a very satisfying project.

It didn't seem to make much sense to me to paint up the Flak 38 gun to mount on the Flakpanzer 38(t) above and toss the infantry figures in the dead lead bin. Instead I mounted the gun onto the vehicle with magnets. This allows the gun to swivel on the mount as well as to be removed and attached magnetically to the original ground mount base. With the crew painted up this gives me a Flak38 gun pretty much as it's intended to be used. I had enough spare crew in my dead lead box to provide an extra loader for the gun in the tank's gun compartment as well.

Next up is a Warlord SdKfz 250 half track. This one is built pretty much straight out of the box with the exception that I used magnets to mound the rear-facing MG-42. This allows for it to be removed when not needed as well as keeping it from being broken off the first time the model is used.

Last up is my RSO Pak-40. This was also featured in an earlier WIP post. The vehicle is now completed and weathered. I had to make a slight compromise on the gun's crew member to allow for the gun to be completely removed when converting to the un-armed transport version. I don't think he'll miss his lower legs all that much. If he does, it's off to the Russian Front for him!

This conversion was done mostly because I had the Pak-40 gun barrel left over from the Hetzer I converted to the Flakpanzer 38(t). The armored front cabin, gun mount and gun shield are entirely scratch built. The gun is mounted magnetically so that it can be pivoted like a turret and also completely removed. I'd like to thank Jacob Lotz for his excellent article on how to do this conversion. I followed Jacob's instructions verbatim with the exception that I had to do a lot more scratch building on my gun mount and shield since I was starting with just a barrel and not a whole Pak-40 gun.

Total effort logged for this is three vehicles and seven figures.