Red Panther Germany, February-March 1945

On September 1944, Tank building facilities received the order from the Waffenamt (designing department for armored vehicles, in the armament and materials department), to stop the application of the antimagnetic zimmerit protection in order to accelerate the delivery of the new tanks, because it was taking up to six days to dry completely.

There were some versions saying that the zimmerit caught fire when the tanks were hit with different kinds of ammo, although they proved to be false through tests made on testing vehicles. In fact, the real reason for the decision was that the units were badly needed in the front line.
By the end of October, of that same year, there was a new order interrupting the use of the dark yellow as a base color (ral 7028).
They used a soldering torch (to "burn" the surface), or a simple brush, to apply dark yellow and olive green (Ral 6003), over the raw surface, following the common camouflage pattern at that time (ambush type).
The continuing bombing raids, along with the lack of raw materials and labor, were the cause for the factories sending the units as fast as possible, without the normal finishing on the units. Some of them were delivered with the antirust paint, while others went out even with some parts without any painting at all, and it was for the crews to "finish" the vehicles with the proper camouflage patterns, if they had the time and the resources to do it. These kind on "painting" was done according to the standards and with their own designs. On December 1944, the nazi army implemented the green shade as a base color; this measure wasn't applied except for some finished Tiger II models, or in building process.
Our model depicts a Panther Ausf "G", built after 1944; assigned to the LVI Panzer Corps, operating in the sector near the German locality of Küstrin, about 40 miles east of Berlin. (You can see several Panther tanks showing this camouflage, in the book "Panzer Truppen" by Thomas Jentz, page 223).

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