Sd.Kfz. 179 Bergepanther Ausf A

Meng, 1/35 scale

Reviewed by Andrew Judson

Summary

F i r s t L o o k

Of late, there have been many kits of the Panther being released by the competing companies, and now joining the trend we have the Bergepanther joining the ranks. A welcome option? I say yes.

Here I will be having a look at Meng’s offering, which by all means looks fantastic.

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Thumbnail panels:

Starting from the outside, you are greeted by some nice artwork on a large box, with profile drawings on the side and a brief history of the vehicle and the kit’s dimensions.

The box almost springs open with the amount of plastic inside - there’s a lot! Starting with the sprues, there are a total of 14 in the sand coloured plastic and one in clear. In total there are 1,377 parts, bearing in mind that 678 of these are track links.

There are also two photo-etched frets with a total of 69 parts, two lengths of cable, a length of chain and a small sheet of decals, with four German crosses. These look to be very well printed.

To put it all together there is a 39 page instruction sheet that is well laid out and drawn, and a colour profile sheet, giving you two camouflage options.

The parts over all look to be very well detailed and clean of flash, however  some care may be needed when removing some of the parts from the sprue, also resulting in some sanding down. Nothing too extreme though.

Looking at the build sequence, all appears well laid out and logical. It starts with the running gear assembly, then moves onto internal torsion bars, lower hull and internal details, including the driver’s and radio operator’s stations, and the massive pully based in the middle of the vehicle.

Also of note are the metal cables that come with this kit. Care will be needed to wind these on to make them look convincing.

From there, things move onto the upper hull, driveline, including those fiddly yet well detailed tracks, and then onto all the outer detail structures from the box structure over the bully, to the large spade on the back and the 20mm cannon and MG on the front.

C o n c l u s i o n

By the end of the build, I think this is going to be one impressive looking kit even straight from the box. Maybe if one wants, you could replace the tracks due to amount of parts, with resin or metal ones, but other than that, you certainly get bang for your buck with zero aftermarket required.

This is a very nice kit of a great subject. If you love your Panther variants, then give this one a look.

Thanks to Meng for the sample