Armortek

hi all

My son was in Japan for a Little month and one morning in Kyoto he decided to get up early to get to a flee market. He was there at 7 AM and the tables was just to be set up by the sellers.

There he noticed a table with military stuff and wanted to see if there was anything of interest. He found a 1977 Tiger 1 magazine with loads of Pictures, of which some have been seen before.

But, I found these interesting Pictures that I personally nevert have seen before.

Look at this Picture with a Shell nearly penetrated the front glacis of the Tiger 1 And this with the Bosch front light mounted on a bracket that is very unsual. In the magazine was also some closeups of the Tiger 131 that was captured in 1943 and here is the 131 in its original colors in the 1960-1970's in Bovington

Morning Steen.

I have that magazine or at least one that has all the same pictures you have posted here? doesn't the Bovington Tiger look much better in that picture than it does now ... I think so anyway.
Cheers Paul.

Hi Paul

Yes its looking a lot better Would have liked to visit Bovington in those days

Steen, there were a number of people who wanted 131 to remain in what they claimed was the original paint as seen in the picture problem is Bovington have records of the Tiger being re-painted several times since it’s capture this was proven when Bovington sanded the paintwork back to original and found the camouflage, the paint was then annualized to reproduce the original colours.

Interesting thread, good points Mark. The Tank Museum did have a notorious period when exhibits were painted in any old colour which took the curator's fancy. Funnily enough, in my short experience of working in museums, it's the ex-military who tend to be less discriminating about colour.

The current team at Bovington are very aware of the need for priceless artefacts to be conserved where possible and restored sympathetically when not. Museums have a duty to the future to represent as accurately as possible an artefact in the condition in which it was used. So the Panzer Armee Afrika scheme on 131 is more about historical provenance than looks. The modeller has a lot more freedom.

Incidentally, if you're interested in what can be done by researching layers of colour, the Fleet Air Arm Museum Corsair IV is top dog. Dave Morris and his team painstakingly removed paint layers to reveal a lot which was unknown about the aircraft's provenance. This was only possible because someone chose to slap on some midnight blue in the sixties "because it looked untidy". That preserved the original paints underneath. Dave Morris wrote a wonderful book about the whole project titled "Corsair KD431: The Time Capsule Fighter". It's a fascinating story and they repeated the technique with the Martlet and are now doing another with the Baka piloted rocket bomb.

All the best.

Stephen

Steve, Some of the paint was done by the Army before the museum got its hands on the tank and yes one only has to look at Bovingtons Jagdpanther to see some of the terrible paint jobs though Bovington is not on its own the restored Elefant in America has another appalling paint job the museum didn’t bother to research any camouflage patterns, at least these days Bovington is trying to paint their stock in a more realistic manner.