Schwimmwagen 1:48 – Frog (Fuman)

A really old Frog kit of the Schwimmwagen in a vignette – a lost Luftwaffe officer

This is the old Fuman, ex-Frog, kit of the Schimmwagen. It can’t of course hold a candle to the new Tamiya 1/48 Schwimmwagen, having much less detail and simplfied components. As the two photo below shows the kit built straight from the box, the rear of the kit is especially lacking. The propeller and its shroud is very thick and devoid of details.

So this is the area I decided to concentrate on. I took the prop mechanism aprat, thinned down all the pieces with a file and proceeded to add the missing bolts, connectors, etc.. Using an old piece of leftover PE, I added the heat shield ontop of the muffler. Again, using old PE pieces, I added retainers for the metal grip/arm used to deploy and retract the propeller. The actual metal arm was made with a piece fo wire and an old plastic ring.

The folded canopy I used is actually a 1/35 tarp that was shortened and reshaped to fit, the original kit’s folded canopy was way to ‘neat’ and thick. After everything was pianted, a small metal chain was attached to the metal arm and left to dangle onto the rear engine’s hood.

The kit was painted with overal Tamiya dessert yellow, followed by light green and red brown as the camo pattern. Chips with a small brush and drak gray was added at all the logical areas. The kit’s decals were used, with a bit surgical painting to change them to show ‘WL’ , indicating a Luftwaffe vechile. A combination of pigemnts were there used to added overal dust and mud effects.

For the stowage, some Tamiya jerry cans was added, along with a Gaso.line resin ammo box. I used an ‘achtung’ decal to added a bit of life to the box, which I’m sure is completely not historically accurate. The map is a reduced color WWII German color map of Russia. Finally, I got some images from the German war time propaganda magazine ‘Signal’ and reduced it in size for the front seat. A bit of reading material for the troops.

The Luftwaffe pilot who is obivouslly looking for the right road back to his base is from an ICM Luftwaffe pilot and ground crew kit. I repositioned his arm by cutting and fillilng with putty to give his ‘perplexed’ pose.