Turns out Corona did not have the effect on my blogging habits that I expected. While I did indeed play less in recent months, I did not blog as much either. But this was mostly due to most of the projects being bigger and taking more time.
One of the first one projects I tackled were two 12,8cm Pak 44s. The models themselves are 3D sculpts by the very talented Richard Humble printed in resin in 1:48th scale. (Anyone interested in these… the models are now being sold in 1:56th scale by Rubicon.)
Since these came without crew miniatures, I had to build some myself. I used plastic minis from different Warlord Games sets for them. These lend themselves quite well for these kinds of conversions.
Up first is the 12,8cm PaK 44 Kanone 81/2. This one actually saw action very late in the war. I wanted it to be manned by a Wehrmacht crew and to give them a look reminiscent of the last winter / spring of the war. So they are all wearing greatcoats.
The painting is also meant to represent this period of the war, with a Resedagrün base and Dunkelgelb and Schokoladenbraun camouflage. The camouflage was intentionally airbrush with a little too much pressure leading the feathering, to make it look like a fast and sloppy paint job.
The ground is meant to match with very muddy ground and dried out winter grass.
The other gun is the Rheinmetal version of the 12,8 cm PaK 44. Now while a few prototypes of this one were build, they never saw action (as far as I know), but it simply looks cool.
For this one I chose an SS crew. Again going for a late war look they are wearing a mixed assortment of clothing. Greatcoat, regular uniforms (both in Feldgrau and Erbsenmuster), smock and Zeltbahn.
The paint ob is quite simple. Just red primer for the gun and Dunkelgrau for the barrel. From what I have read, barrels were often primed grey, even till the end of the war, due to the grey paint being more resistant to the heat of the gun.
The paint job got some streaking grime and rain marks to show that the gun was exposed to the elements. There is a tarpaulin hanging over the barrels to break up the guns silhouette. The tarpaulin was born out of necessity. When I had just assembled the gun, Sami accidentally swept the model off the table with his tail, breaking the gun. After I glued it back together , the barrel had a slight bend. Not much, but it was slightly noticeable where the barrels broke. But the tarpaulin is masking that quite well.
For the base I went with an urban look. This way it could the urban fighting seen a lot during the last few months of the war.
That is it for today, but since we are off on holidays, I will have more time posting in coming days. So there is more to come.
dhcwargamesblog 
Pete S/ SP
September 21, 2020 at 22:48
Those are great- huge though. I’m surprised that they could be handled in the Anti Tank role.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Burkhard
September 22, 2020 at 08:19
Thank you.
I guess late in the war they became ever more desperate, especially vs. The extremely heavy tanks like,the JS-2. That being said, they must have been a nightmare to handle and their sheer size combined with the fact that smokeless ammo was very rare for the 12,8 cm guns would have negated the biggest advantage (being hard to spot) of AT-guns to them.
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Colonel Mustard
September 22, 2020 at 01:25
love the muddy wheels! and great job with the urban base
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Burkhard
September 22, 2020 at 08:21
Thank you!
I have mould with an urban theme to push green stuff into. This base is way too large for that, but just “casting” a few pieces here and there and adding rubble and some plaster bricks works wonders.
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von Peter himself
September 23, 2020 at 01:27
Hi Burkhard
Great work on a couple of monsters.
Salute
von Peter himself
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Burkhard
September 23, 2020 at 09:00
Thank you Peter.
They sure are beast.
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