History:

With the success of the more familiar Bergepanther, the German military authorities ordered that beginning in January, 1944, all PzKpfw III returned for overhaul would be converted to recovery vehicles. This would add needed recovery abilities to German maintenance units that were always demanding more vehicles capable of this work. From January 1944 to March 1945, approximately 167 panzer III Ausf. J, L, M and N would be converted. At the same time, a recovery anchor was also developed to help in the recovery of severely bogged down vehicles. The idea behind the anchor was to add mechanical advantage to the towing vehicle (BgPz. III). By placing the anchor at an appropriate location, the BgPz. III would tow out the disabled vehicle via a reduction tackle attached by cable to the anchor. Once the disabled vehicle was recovered, the BgPz III could tow it. The anchor could be recovered later.

Above is one of the few known pictures of an early BgPz. III with anchor in tow. These vehicles were normally issued to Panzerjaeger-Abteilung operating Sturmgeschutz III and IV or Panzer IV’s.

Models:

This project started when our local IPMS chapter (IPMS London, ON. Canada) decided to hold a little competition. In order to get more people building and finishing kits in our club, we decided to hold a “1 year build” contest. The previous contest was not so successful (the dreaded “1 month build” contest) as who can finish a kit in 1 month, right? We thought we better give ourselves a little more time this time. Rules were simple. Bring out an unstarted kit to the first club meeting of the year to register it and to show that we weren’t cheating by trying to finish a started project.

I had always wanted to build this funky vehicle since learning of it. Problem was that there were not a lot of references on it. I had purchased the Precision Models kit of the Berge Panzer III conversion at a model show years ago. This kit was designed to fit the old Tamiya Panzer III kit and needless to say, it turned out to be just as bad as the kit it was intended for. It was not until I had posted a message on Track-Link looking for scale drawings that I hit gold! I received a reply from Christophe Jacquemont (of France) and he offered to send scale drawings of this vehicle as well as the recovery anchor! I couldn’t believe my luck! Once the plans arrived in the mail, I was in business. At the same time, Jentz’s book on Bergepanzerwagen came out and it offered some more information for the project. I also had a credible cross-reference for the scale drawings.

For the actual towing vehicle, (BgPz. III) I chose the Dragon Pz. III Ausf. J. It had nice detail and tons of spare parts in the box that I could use for this project. The Bergeanker was totally scratch-built. The photo below shows the completed combo before paint.

Construction: The Bergepanzer III

Construction of the tractor portion commenced with the Dragon Pz. III Ausf. J as per the kit instructions. The lower hull was completed stock except for the replacement of the kit sprockets with spares from Dragon’s new Nashorn kit and the addition of the heavy duty towing pintle. This came courtesy of the Precision Models conversion kit. It was one of the few pieces that I did salvage from it.

As you can see by this photo, the towing pintle was basically a section of I-beam that had a heavy towing eye welded to it. It was the same towing hold that was added to late StuG III G’s from Dec. 1944 onwards. A good reference for this comes from the “Achtung Panzer # 5” on the StuG III, IV and SiG 33. I detailed the mount further by adding a section of chain to the tow pin.

The next change occurred with the replacement of the kit track with a set of Ostketten track courtesy of Accurate Armour. These resin tracks are the only ones available that I know of that are true Ostketten. There has been much previous discussion on various modeling forums as to who makes Ostketten and exactly what they are. Basically, a lot of people tend to confuse Winterketten and Ostketten because of manufacturers like Dagon and Friulmodellismo misidentifying these. A quick rule of thumb is that Winterketten look like Pz. III or IV track with duckbill type extensions on them. Ostketten, on the other hand, look like mini Tiger I track. If you look at the next photo, you can see the resemblance to the Tiger track.

The tracks came cast in sections of 20 links and had to be glued together and formed with heat to get them to conform to the suspension. I had never used resin tracks before and I was a little leery of this but once the tracks were warmed with a hair dryer, they bent around the sprockets, road wheels, idlers and return rollers with ease. I had to carefully remove 1 or 2 links to get the tracks to join, but that was no problem. Did I say how easy it was to assemble the track?

The next step involved completing the upper hull. I took careful note of what items would have been added or deleted in the conversion of the actual vehicle. I also took a little artistic license here and deviated slightly from the scale drawings as to what items were kept or discarded. Part of this reason was the fact that the kit track guards have missing tread plate detail were kit items for an Ausf. J were located. The upper hull also included the mounts for the 2-ton jib crane that were used to lift or move larger objects. Here I was able to salvage some more items from the Precision Models conversion kit. The crane mounts, crane base, block and tackle, chain hooks and support arm mounts were used. See the accompanying photos for more details.

The last major step in building this vehicle was the construction of the open-top wooden box. This item from the Precision Models conversion was over sized and warped so it was pretty much useless. Construction began by selecting appropriately sized sections of channel and angle iron in plastic and assembling the base. The scale drawings that Christophe had sent were invaluable at this stage. Included in the set was an exploded assembly drawing of this box and how the various pieces were joined. Once I was satisfied with the basic “steel” support frame, I had to fill it out with planking. Sections of 0.040 plastic card were cut to size and all of the wood relief was scribed in freehand. Cap screw heads were formed with a leather-beading tool to add mounting detail to the side planks. The completed assembly was then glued on top of the upper hull over the opening for the turret.

The unditching beam from the Precision kit was added to side without the jib crane and it received the same treatment as the planking.

The kit also received the “Aber” treatment as seen in the previous photos. I used their set #35018 for the PzKpfw III Ausf J. The turret details were relegated to the spares box, as they were not required. Working from the ground up, the kit received new fender supports, spare track hanger, tool clamps, cable clamps, fender parts, headlight details, horn details, tail light details, jack details, storage box details, and other miscellaneous details. Tools were replaced with a combination of Tamiya tools and my own personal mods. Some original Dragon tools were also retained.

The jib crane that came in the Precision kit appeared too small and of a type that I had never seen before. It was discarded and a new one was scratch built form brass and styrene. The scale drawings from Christophe were the only ones that showed the crane deployed. I was able to get accurate measurements from these and construct a new crane. The block and tackle on the crane also came from the Precision kit. It was assembled as per the kit instructions and detailed with a few bolt heads. The chain was added from the spares box.