The ancient Tamiya 1: 35th scale (35047) 7,5cm Pak.40/L46 anti-tank gun kit that has been around for as long as I can remember. Not a bad kit to be honest but the gun crew figures are really showing their age by current standards. That said one of the first things I did was to toss the figures into a bag for donation to some other modeler's stash. The rest of the kit(s) six in total have sat in my stash for far too many years. So long in fact that the current price for this kit is now four times more than what I originally paid for the things when first purchased.
I recently gave away four of the kits in an "as-is" condition. They were all missing the odd hard rubber tyre star-shaped wheels and the ammunition box that holds four rounds of ammunition. The ammunition boxes were retained while the star-shaped wheels were disposed of by donation.
The remaining two Tamiya kits were retained with the intent on creating a post WW2-early NATO anti-tank gun. This idea is based on nothing factual, only on the rationale that with all of the surplus German weapons and equipment that was left behind upon surrender it would have been something that could have been put into service until better weapons could be acquired. I know from my past research on other WW2 German weapons that the 2,0cm FlaK 38 was in use with Portugal and Yugoslavia long into the late 60's and early 70's. So a Pak.40 in NATO use appealed to me as a way to build this kit as something not WW2 German.
I started working on this kit about a year ago and the construction progress has been very slow. One of the reasons for this was my search for suitable replacement wheels that would look compatible with the PaK40. The large star-shaped wheels are easily recognized as being WW2 German equipment so they had to go. I had several replacement wheels and tyre candidates to choose from and the best of these came from an Italeri Opel Blitz truck kit. These are the front wheels though I did consider using the rear dual wheels it did not look very convincing to me. So I am staying with the front wheels from the Opel Blitz. I suspect that the same tyres/wheels in the Tamiya Opel Blitz kit will also work since the Italeri and Tamiya kits are nearly identical.
Now that I have decided on the replacement wheels I have been able to get a bit further on this project. Far enough to take a couple of WIP images to share my idea on a post WW2 PaK.40 in use with NATO.
Dry-fit to see if the wheels will interfere with the carriage and splinter shield did not appear to be an issue. The gun was able to traverse with no apparent interference.
