Used kit:
Manufacturer: The Bodi (H)
Scale: 1:35
Catalogue number: 35039
Material: resin
Number of parts: 4
Decals:-
Internet: www.thebodi.eu
Author: Kovács Olivér
Photos by: Bódi Krisztián
In my opinion, WWII Hungarian uniforms are very interesting
and unusual, thanks to the experiments and developments of different arms of
the Hungarian Armed Forces, but also to necessary field modifications applied.
The subject figure of this article is a real rarity, as so
far no Hungarian panzer crew was released which was wearing German type
uniform, this gap was filled by Black Army Modells’ a The Body’s kits, I’m
presenting the figure of the latter.
Upon setting up pazner units, a need emerged for special
utility uniforms. These first units received officially issued garments which
become known as 1936M leather uniform,
consisting of ¾ length leather jacket and the belonging leather pants. The
crews wore the jackets tucked in, making the uniform very uncomfortible, also
difficult to move on and around the vehicles and made it nearly impossible to
get through the small access hatches. In 1942, during the establishment of a
new panzer division of the Magyar Királyi Honvéd Páncélos Lőiskola (Hungarian
Royal Panzer School?) with german aid, issuance of new garment was considered, aiming
to provide more confortible, more suitable uniform for front conditions and
mass produceable from available materials. The leadership of the school
suggested to use the German pattern with minor changes, such as changing the
black colour to grey or dark khaki, finding black too visible in terrain. In
accordance with readily available materials, for the first production
poppy-seed grey material was used, designated to repair crews originally, which
worked very well, however a winter variant was also needed, the grey material
was suitable only for warm conditions. The solution was a widely available
material in so called police-grey colour, the cut of the uniform almost
exclusively copied the german cut, with differently shaped and coloured
collar-insignia according to the Army standards.
However, copying the uniforms also had it’s drawbacks,
during the fightings in Hungary, Soviet soldiers often mistook Hungarian crews
with Germans... Unfortunately there are no surviving examples of this uniform,
in all ascpects we can only use survived documentation, drawings and
descriptions.
The figure is the usual top quality of The Body, with minimal flash. It is cast with
torso, head and hands separated, the pose is very simple, yet attractive and
very suitable for dioramas.
After the grey basecoat, first up were the eyes and the face
painted, I used the same colours as on my previous figures, Vallejo Brown sand
876, Basic Skintone 815, Burnt Cadmium Red 814.
The soldier wears ’ushanka’ type, sheep fur ear-hat, which also
determines the era where we can place him. Besides trying to represent the
texture of the material, I paid attention to paint the stamp of the Központi
Ruhatár (kind of Quartermaster Corps for clothing) to one of the flaps of the
hat. These stamps were of black or purplish colour, marking officially issued
garment. The ear-hat got Khaki 70.988, mixed with a small amount of brown
70.941 and yellow 70.882, as base colour, highlighted with white.
A real challange was mixing the ’police-grey’ colour of the
uniform, for which I needed and appropriate blue, respectively blue-grey and a
dark grey. Fortunately I found the right colours in the Panzer Aces series of
Vallejo, getting the basecolour by mixing German Tankcrew 70.333 and Russian
Tankcrew 70.325, resulting in a realatively dark, blue-greyish colour. This was
highlighted in a number of layers with Russian Tankcrew colour, paying
attention to get the lower parts generally darker and the upper ones, around
the shoulders to a lighter shade. Boots were painted dark brown, highlighted by
orange, also serving to represent some were on them.
Once the figure was ready, I moved on to create the base.
Starting-up from the figure’s pose, I went for an idea to depict the
preparations for fording a river with, let’s say by a Turán or a Pz III, our
man checking the current or looking for a bridge nearby to ease the crossing.
For this I tried to form the groundwork from putty to look like a stream bank,
painted various browns and yellows. The water is by Vallejo, with some plants
added into it.
As a final step, the pinned figure was glued to the base.
References:
dr. László Tóth - A Magyar Királyi Honvédség Egyenruhái
(Uniforms of the Royal Hungarian Armed Forces) 1926-1945 - ISBN: 978 963
06 3136 5 – www.huniform.com