Steff Sorensen from our Metal Casting team recently tried to sneak a really cool project through the Studio – naturally we had to collar her and get the low-down. A Tiger II in American colours? What’s going on, Steff?
While rummaging through my bits box a few weeks ago, I happened upon a Tiger II kit buried amongst US Army and Airborne sprues. I would have quite cheerfully painted all of these up as their own individual units, but I really enjoy painting armies with a strong narrative theme. This got me wondering – did US forces ever capture a Tiger II?
As it turns out, they did – just one of them, though! The only intact Tiger II ( Tiger 332) captured during the war currently sits in the Armor School at Fort Benning, GA. It’s not where it currently is that’s interesting though – it’s how it got there.
In late December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, a patrolling US Sherman crew spotted a Tiger II, half-hidden amongst the tree cover. Seeing no reaction from the big cat, and assuming its crew were asleep, they fired a ‘star shell’ illumination round. The Tiger’s crew, assuming they had caught fire, evacuated and fled, and were gunned down. This left the Americans unexpectedly in possession of a fully functional Tiger II!
With a narrative to build to, I had a read through Armies of the United States to find a way to field the Tiger II in a US list, and settled on proxying it as a M26 Pershing for friendly games. While it’s not quite an exact match in real life, in terms of in-game stats it’s plenty close enough.
Setting to work, I scoured the internet for some reference photos of Tiger 332, noting the cut-off track guards, US flags and missing spare tracks and grab handles. I followed these images as closely as I could when assembling the kit, rather than sticking exactly to the instructions – it’s fun to go a little ‘off-piste’ sometimes in pursuit of a goal!
My mixture of US Army and US Airborne sprues gave me a couple of nice little infantry squads and teams, and all I needed to complete the collection as a ‘legal’ force was another vehicle for the Armoured Platoon. Obviously, given the story of 332’s capture, it had to be a Sherman, and I opted for the resin and metal M4A3 with 76mm gun! I also decided to pick up a couple of ‘Deuce’ trucks, so that my infantry could keep up with the armour. With everything built, I was ready to paint.
I’m not going to go into too much detail on how I painted the force here, but in brief I made extensive use of an airbrush to build up layers and shading using a ‘zenithal’ effect, as well as plenty of oil washes on the vehicles. I wanted to display the many subtle variations of green and olive drab on the infantry uniforms, and add plenty of depth to the colours. This is my favourite part of any project, and I’m excited to do a ‘deep dive’ on my process once the rest of the force is done.
Overall this little lot took around 12 hours of actual painting and 24 hours of waiting for oils to dry, and I’m really happy with how everything turned out. So much so, that I’ve picked up another tank (a Stuart) , an M3A1 half track, an M15 MGMC, a medic, and an Intelligence officer to expand the force, with plans to add a third infantry unit of 10 Pathfinders. I’m probably going to add some more ‘wintry’ elements as well to really hammer home that Battle of the Bulge feeling. Just a few bits to be getting on with!
~Steff Sorensen
Check out Steff’s progress on the project in this little gallery!
If Steff’s got you inspired to start a US force of your own, we’ve got you covered with a vast range of miniatures. You can find them all at the link below:
