Dragon

1/72 Bergepanzer Tiger (P)

Kit Number 7227

Reviewed By Kip Rudge, #40597

MSRP: $11.98 USD

The purpose-built armored recovery vehicle for tanks and self-propelled weapons didn’t really seem to catch on until after WW2.  I suppose that while the tank whizzes were figuring out blitzkrieg, schwerepunkt and recon by force, the grease monkeys never really got a chance to pipe in and get themselves noticed.

Seeing how German engineering in WW2 was geared to complexity as opposed to reliability, the need for recovery vehicles became paramount.  As a result nearly every tracked chassis the Germans made eventually featured a recovery variant.

Dragon has followed up on their 1/35 Porsche chassis’ troika (Ferdinand, Elefant and Bergetiger) with a 1/72 scale offering. The Bergetiger completes the 1/72 trifecta.  Considering that only three of the Porsche Bergetigers were made, we are limited in markings and variants.

The Dragon kits comes with around 220 parts (most of them track links – but we’ll go there in a minute) in their gray styrene along with a photo-etch fret.  The decal sheet is small – one set of Balkencruz.  But I could find no markings at all on the references I could dig up on this ugly ducking.  The instructions are four-color and pretty darn nice.

This guy starts off as a pretty simple build.  The hull tub is one piece and very nicely molded – as is the whole kit.  I would advise leaving off the fenders until you solve the suspension enigma.  The road wheels and drives assemble very nicely and attach very well to the hull.

Here’s where it gets a little dicey.  The tracks are very nicely molded link and length – with 50 individual links in 1/72 scale.  Now I know an Elephant track shoe is a pretty hefty hunk o metal, but shrink that down to 1/72 we’re talking Amazing Voyage-sized.

Now I gave these fellows every opportunity to cooperate and they laughed at me.  In addition I tried every combination of the lengths and could not get them to fit properly along the bottom run – there is simply too much track.  On top of that, they did not fit the drive sprockets correctly.  Being a fan of link-to-link in 1/35, I thought I knew a little about putting tracks together – I wuz wrong.

After spending three nights locked in mortal combat with the kit supplied links I surrendered.  I released them back into the wild and headed back into my storage room for Plan B.  I had purchased Dragon’s original Elephant kit when it hit the market a couple of years ago, but still had the very nice rubber band tracks supplied with that kit.  I knew they would make short work of the track impasse – I wuz wrong…again.

As I wound the rubber band around the suspension I discovered that the earlier tracks were about a ½ inch too long. Huh? They fit the earlier Elephant well when they were dry-fitted. “Never mind,” I told myself, “you are a modeler. So model.”

So I shortened the rubber bands and prepared to glue them around the suspension.  These rubber bands were made from Dragon styrene – a supposedly glueable, flexible plastic.  As you can see from the above pictures, Dragon styrene is flexible.  I would debate strenuously the glueable moniker.  No amount, or type, of plastic glue would get the tracks to adhere to the running gear.  Super glue wasn’t very effective either.  Only the fact that I was in possession of the kit due to the largesse of IPMS, saved it from a high speed flight into the wall.  You might say we developed a hate-hate relationship.

Which truly is a shame since the rest of the kit went together quite nicely.  I needed only the smallest amount of filler at the rear of the engine deck.

The jib boom is truly a very nifty piece of engineering as well.  You have the option of displaying the boom folded or deployed.  I chose deployed because of the really well done photo-etch block and tackle chain provided by Dragon.  If you twist the chain slightly it will show a nice 3D effect rather than flat PE.  This little jewel could be the centerpiece of many small scale dioramas.

I based coated the Bergetiger in black and then misted in increasingly opaque coats of Model Master acrylic dunkelgelb.  Then added a light dry-brushing and she was done.

If you can conquer the link-and-length track, this is a very attractive little kit.  Although it has limited potential for markings it would look very nice pulling a Ferdinand out of the mud or lifting out the engine or transmission.

Thanks to Dragon Model for providing this review copy.

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