Review: Stalingrad Miniatures WSS Panzer Crewman Kursk 1943

Recently Stalingrad Miniatures released a large set of ten Panzermen of the German armoured forces in the time of “Operation Dynamo” – the battle of the Kursk Salient in 1943 – as a taster we thought we would build and review one of the figures and show you his qualities…

# 3597 - WSS Panzer Crewman, Kursk 1943

1 figure

1/35^th scale

3 pieces of grey resin

Available from Stalingrad’s Distributors

This large new set from Stalingrad includes ten (10!) figures and the decal for a well-known tiger that fought in “Operation Citadel” the attack of the Kursk pocket in 1943. We previewed them a while ago here and they make quite a set! If you do buy this set all together you get two bonus figures that aren’t sold separately, but today let’s just start small with one of the figures from the bunch.

This male model of a tanker is seen here as a figure sculpted from this picture – a Tiger tanker leaning on his precious vehicle in the summer of 1943. Now do you notice anything odd about him? Well not odd but I always see that figures in the war were slightly (ahem) slimmer than people are now. This came from a mixture of both “Erstaz” food and too little of it. Many figure makers fall into the trap of making figures modelled off people in reconstructed clothing that they have pictures of and then sculpt. The one thing I noticed about this tanker straight away so that he is suitably skinny!

The figure comes in the small black cardboard box as is typical of Stalingrad figures secured inside by a Zip-loc bag. The casting is very well done – no bubbles of any kind and there are no visible flaws on him. There is however a simple removal job of a vertical seam on the rear of his hat/head. He sits on a little pouring block which we left him on for taking pictures in this review. This I suppose could be handy if you needed somewhere to hold him when painting.

The head is a single option, he is wearing a cloth peaked M43 style hat. It is well wrinkled as is appropriate for the soft cloth these were made from. His face is long and angular – Stalingrad do seem to provide unique faces for their figures and this one does not disappoint. A thin nose and long ears with a pointy chin give this man a youthful look.

The one thing I got stuck on was the neck joint. It has a really funny fit that look uneven on the casting block, so check when you are carving it off the pouring block how it fits and the angle – I have attached it at the angle prescribed on the box art but something tells me I could have done it a little easier as I had to use some superglue as filler.

Next up we have the separate arm which joins the shoulder at a high but flush fit. Check box art again because he looks funny until you lean him on something to check the angle. His clothing is nicely wrinkled again and his sleeve is rolled up. You can see fingers and bones in the hand clearly. Only under much magnification did I notice the funny joint in the elbow which could do with a little smoothing out.

His skinny torso with rolled up sleeves showing a small wristwatch and the Panzer destruction badge on his chest to his M42 peaked cap.The torso is attached to the handy casting block. It makes him look even taller as a figure.

With some figures the clothing is sometimes the star of the sculpt – it is just so in this case that if it isn’t the first thing I noticed it is in the top two. The panzerman’s overalls are depicted here with loose flappy sleeves, flappy pockets and buttons that pinch around where they are fastened. Every bit of his overalls just sits and flops at a very lifelike angle. The wrinkling on the pants, especially where they gather around the ankles is just as impressive as the rest of his torso (including the medals and wristwatch.)

The body language of this figure is well done. He is leaning off to the right as you can see on the real life picture above on to his tank.

 

Here he is all put together ready for paint..

A bit of filler to the neck area and a nice bit of paint and this is a lovely little figure you could use in any Post 1943 setting – I really like his body language and features of the face and clothing very much.

Adam Norenberg

Here he is painted up - very lovely figure when you see the full potential

You can get this figure – as well as all of the set and any others from Stalingrad at their Distributors worldwide.