Tamiya German King Tiger with Production Turret, 1/35 Scale, Kit No. 35164

Armed with a derivative of the feared 88mm anti-aircraft gun, it must have been a sobering sight on the battlefield.  However, these machines were too complex and too prone to break down.  This is a result of the German procurement system, which was dominated by Hitler himself often making bizarre production decisions.  (Witness his disastrous  decision on the first jet fighter - the Me 262 - demanding it be configured as a bomber.)

Wikipedia has an informative article under the title "Tiger II". Also, in the January 2017 issue of Model Military International is an excellent walk around "Tiger II Close Up".   I believe the Tiger II and the King Tiger are one in the same, but I am no student of the various combinations and permutations of Nazi armor.  If I am wrong, maybe someone will enlighten me.

The model is a typically excellent Tamiya kit.  They are such a pleasure to build.  It is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.  And, you can get into the painting and weathering much more quickly.  You will not be wasting time removing bits of flash and/or modifying parts to get them to fit.  Nor will you have instructions that puzzle rather than guide you.

Early in the build, I decided to replace the vinyl tracks supplied with the kit.  I selected the Tamiya Separate Track Link set for this model.  They were easy to put together and paint/weather.  This was my first use of separate links, and I think I will be using them often in the future.  
 
After I went to that trouble, why put the fenders on the model and cover most of it up?  This is only my 4th armor model this century, and I was impatient to find out if a separate link track would be superior to the usual vinyl track.  And I found out it is.  If you look under the fenders, you would see the track dips down on the road wheels just like the prototype and looks quite realistic.  The Tamiya links are of course plastic and I bonded them with Tamiya Extra Thin cement, which is my favorite adhesive for most work.

The scheme I selected was the so-called “ambush” scheme.  The dots of paint were simply hand-painted on after I was done airbrushing the other three colors.   German military equipment in the war received many different types of camouflage often using three or more colors.  I really wonder how successful these schemes were compared to the plain olive drab of the U. S. Army. 

The colors I used were Vallejo Model Air Dark Yellow (71.025), Vallejo Model Air Armor Brown (71.041), and Vallejo Model Air Camouflage Dark Green (71.019).  I used various washes I mixed from acrylic paints using rust and black paint from Model Master.  The tracks and road wheels were weathered with these washes,  as well as Vallejo Model Wash European Dust (76.523).

The model represents a King Tiger that was involved with the Battle of the Bulge.

Thank you for looking and feel free to post a comment.