Kfz. 252 for Blitzkrieg

Another conversion from my Early-War force I'll show today, as I finish up a few more things on the T16/6pdr build is my Kfz. 252.

In the earlier StuG platoons, the commander rode around in a Kfz. 253. Battlefront's platoon includes this vehicle as the commander of the platoon, but does not make models for, nor include the Kfz. 252. This was an ammo carrier for the StuG. It makes sense to not have them, because they were not combat vehicles, but all the same, it's a funky model I decided to convert for the sake of an objective.

Here you can see the process of shaving down a Kfz. 250 for use in this madness. I have a jeweler's saw, which I can not recommend enough! I also narrowed the front end. For some reason Battlefront makes their 250s have a kind of tombstone front, and doesn't bevel them in at all. Next, it was cut and insert the back end, putty to smooth out the joins, and plasticard for the rear doors. The trailer is from pieces of a Kfz. 10/5 trailer, cut apart and glued with plasticard. The crew are leftovers, some from the desert, some from generic guns replaced with desert figures. I didn't end up having three, because there just wasn't the room.

The final painted vehicle is slightly different in layout (more space efficient), and depicts two crew from the 252 laying out StuG shells in preparation for a StuG darting back from the front lines to get more ammunition. They're laying them out to speed up the process since, as a battlefield objective, they're not exactly far from fire themselves! The paintscheme is, I know, a rare use splattering of brown mud over the grey paint, but I figure of any of them, the Kfz. 252 would want some extra camo.

This angle shows the interior. It's not converted in any specific way, as the interior already pretty much matches. It's painted white, as most vehicle interiors at the time were, with door and hatch interiors painted to match the exterior, so they wouldn't act as big targets. You can see the extra detail thrown on the trailer, with a piece of paper and leftover strip of plasticard for the lid, and modelling wire for the trailer hook.

The crew are painted in standard Wehrmacht colours, and given the red waffenfarbe of the Assault Guns. It's meant to be a force fighting in either Poland or France, so they still have the national symbol and Wehrmacht symbols on their helmets.

This was a fun model to start my Blitz painting with, as it let me test colour schemes on a model that would be out of place a bit regardless.

Happy New Year by the way!