Panzer III Cupola

[Pete Nash]

I would appreciate a little bit of Knowledge and advice please.

I want to get the Cupola on my Panzer III right.
When I put it all together I noticed that the centre line of the Hatch does not line up with the middle any of the viewing ports.

As you can see from my image, with a the centre of a viewing port aligned with a Distant Target Indicator the Hinges, as drilled on the kit Cupola, gives the hatch a an off set to the left.,


My interpretations of Published images suggests that the hatch would open directly fore and aft and in line with the front facing viewing port.

If this is true then it appears the hatch hinge points have been drilled in the wrong place on my Cupola and would need re-drilling.

I do realise that the MG 34 mount may be the wrong one for a Panzer III

[Stephen White]

Pete, sorry to say you're right. The centreline of the split hatch should pass through the centre of the front vision port and be aligned with the CL of the whole vehicle fore and aft. The following pics might help. Sod's law that most of my photos show the back but if you know that, the front sorts itself. Stephen

Pz III Command Tank Antennae.jpg (174.36 KiB) Viewed 2443 times

Stephen

[Pete Nash]

Thanks Stephen, I thought so.

Pillar Drill here I come

[Pete Nash]

The 'modification' to the cupola to make the hatch halves go fore and aft instead of slightly off centre wasnt as bad as I thought it might be.
When I took the hatch hinges off I found four holes, two of which were threaded for the M3 X 6 CSK screws to hold the hinges in place.

By moving the hatch hinges One Hole Clockwise I found that the split was now fore and aft. So now all I have to do is drill and tap two holes instead of four, using the Studs CH0310 to fill exposed holes.

In the Image below, the holes marked RED indicate the unused/redundant ones.