The Pink Panther

Don't ask me why, cause I don't know myself

Anyway, I've bought this Panther quite a time ago in a model shop named... Panther (or Pantera - the Polish name for this tank). It was placed in a Kupiec Poznanski (Poznan Merchant) shopping centre. Unfortunately it was moved two months ago to the location far away from city center, so I (probably) won't visit it anymore.

Anyway, Panther was the last model I've bought there, on a sale (now when I think about it, it might have been due to the shop's removal). Initially I wanted to make a captured Panther from Warsaw Uprising, but it turned out that the space on the front is way too small to paint the chessboard, and I didn't have decals small enough to place them instead. The idea of the pink Panther arose when I saw a Wikipedia article "Mandela Way T-34 Tank". This tank has been repainted numerous times and one of them involved coating it with pink paintjob. I thought a Panther tank would be more suitable, due to the popular cartoon character, the Pink Panther (Różowa Pantera in Polish, der Rosarote Panther in German).

Some time ago I've also found an interesting and slightly amusing story. During the German evacuation from Rouen Oberscharfuhrer Will Fey (famous for destroying 14 Sherman tanks during a fight lasting for half an hour and 15th several hours later in his Tiger 134) was given a task of going back to Seine's western bank and destroying German tanks abandoned by their crews. After blowing up 3 Tigers he was given a message that two more tanks are on a nearby streets. It turned out that two Panther were already taken by French insurgents and are being prepared for service in their ranks. Fey and his men charged at the tank with machine guns and drove the insurgents off. When they climbed to the tank to place explosives inside, they noticed French rosettes and a bucket of pale pink paint. Later it was considered that insurgents wanted to paint the tank pink to ridicule the German Panzerwaffe and to attract attention, but in the end it was decided not, since the bucket was way to small to cover the whole vehicle. The most propable theory is that the insurgents wanted to write patriotic slogans on the tank, but for some reason - maybe they couldn't find other paint - they've picked a bucket of pink one.

I wondered why there are so few Pink Panthers in the internet; I thought it is quite obvious idea and I'd find dozens, if not hundreds of similar projects. The answer to that question was that... it's hard to get a pink paint. Pactra and Humbrol don't have any, except one which didn't fit to my concept at all. Only later I've made a good looking mix of two Pactra shades (pale flesh and Richthofen-red) while looking for the proper skin tone for Volkssturm figures (result: pale skin + bright orange I bought for God-in-heaven-knows what purpouse, I totally cannot recall now ). This ment a green light for the Pink Panther.

The kit is an old Airfix 1/76 kit. The tank is made of green plastic, so applying the pink paint was quite troublesome. Not to mention the shades are different in some places, because I failed to maintain the proportions of pale skin and Richthofen-red. But I managed, somehow.

OK, back to the set. The chassis is quite different from Revell's Jagdpanther I've made before. In its case the torsion bars were moulded into the hull. Here they are separate parts which have to be placed one after another. As if the wheels weren't enough trouble

Yeah, the wheels. From my previous experience (Panther, Jagdpanther, Sd.Kfz. 251, and now also Konigstiger) I know this type of road wheels are especially irritating to place (not to mention they don't give a good grip to the tracks, except vinyl ones). You have to watch the wheel's order of placement, otherwise you'll have to strip the whole thing down and assemble them again. But there's an interesting feature which may help in the assembly. I didn't check this before in Revell's kits, but here the space between the wheels on the sprue and in the model is the same. In other words, you can place all the wheels from a single row at once and THEN cut them off the sprue, instead of placing them one by one.

The much unfortunate tank commander comes from my Sd.Kfz. 234 Puma armoured car. Of all figures, he was the most prone to detach from the stand and fall behind the bed. So now he'll suffer for eternity in pink uniform.

Instead of decals I used my mom's old fingernails sticks. I thought that the flowers match perfectly to the Pink Panther's paintjob. The painting itself is not perfect, in many places you can see brushmarks and thick paint spots, but frankly, I don't care. It was built for fun, after all, not for beauty contest.

I considered making two sentences, Mach Krieg, Nicht Liebe (Make War, Not Love) on the hull and Still not as gay as Twilight on the back, but I decided that with my writing skills I'd just spoil the whole thing.

Anyway, still not as gay as Twilight