DRAGON

E-100

Heavy Tank

I was inspired to build this kind of E100 by an article of a 1/35 E-100 in the Steelmaster No.64 (German-release). Because of this, similarities in the design and painting are not coincidental.

General
During the last weeks I noticed that there are differences between some releases of the Dragon E-100 kit. Some kits include two soft plastic figures, others do not. My two kits have open turret-hatches, but according to the pictures I have seen at 'Henk of Holland' (and according to the instructions) it is also possible to get a turret with closed hatches.

Hull

Some adjustments/corrections were made to the hull to improve the overall appearance. The covers for the track-tension-adjuster at the rear plate were removed and turned 180°. The fan gratings included the kit were replaced by better ones from the Revell Tiger II. The poor original fan meshes were also replaced. The outstanding fan meshes you can see at the pictures came from Voyager (I absolutely like them).

The pivot points of the drivers and radio-operators hatches are placed wrong. It would not be possible to open both hatches at the same time without a collision. I decided to replace them by Revell-parts also. During the assembly I realized, that the combat area fan could not be placed in the same position as on the Tiger II, because it would block the turret's movements. Therefore I changed the position of this fan to the one that's seen on the Jagdtiger, this appeared plausible to me.

The armour of the rear plate was enlarged according to original photos. At the sides the “details” were grinded away. Afterwards the fixtures for the side skirts were scratch build in the right positions (according to Panzer-Tracts). To save time I did this only for three skirts that should be missing on the finished model.

Side Skirts

Perhaps the largest failure (if there's such a thing on a PAPER tank) in this kit are the side skirts. These had to be modified in length, so that the distances between the screws and the gaps are the same for all skirts. To achieve this, it was necessary to cut the skirts in suitable pieces and correct the length with some plastic card. Afterwards they were glued together again. The rear skirts were modified and some inner details were added to all skirts in the visible areas.

Suspension

The suspension was built almost 'out of the box'. Only the idler wheel was fitted closer to the front and more downwards. That was necessary, because of the extended rear armour-plate and this looks more like the Panzer-Tracts-drawings. Therefore the DS-tracks were shortened at an invisible position.

Turret

The turret is scratch build according to the Maus-II-drawings from Panzer-Tracts. The ball race, the hatch-area and the fan-area were cut from the original turret of the E-100 kit and integrated into the Maus-II-turret. The cover of the target optics was also used at the new turret.

The gun mantle is made of brass tubes, many different plastic sheets and putty, while the gun barrels are aluminium parts from RB-model (12,8cm Pak44 L/55 and 7,5cm KwK37 L/24).

References

Panzer-Tracts No.6-3

Preview sample purchased by the author.

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Article Last Updated: 24 January 2015