Interior

DESIGN Part1
Redecorating the Dragon
Elephant with the Jaguar
interior

Seduced by the picture on the box - again!

How many times has this happened? Fortunately when I had
forced my way into the packaging I was pleasantly surprised by
the quality of the parts therein. I had stumbled across the
Jaguar interior set by chance shortly after the release of the
Dragon Elephant and it seemed like too good an oportunity to
miss, so I ignored the fact that it was designed for the old Italeri
kit and took the plunge.
1 The Lower Hull with the fighting compartment fitted. The main floor
I do have a weakness for interiors, although I usually manage to casting was not a good fit and had to be filled where it sloped up to
talk myself out of them because often so little remains visible meet the rear hull. Notice the other traces of filler to fill the odd gaps
unless you do a cut away. Jaguar supply a fairly complete and sink marks in the hull moulding.
interior with only the engine bay left untouched, and fortunately 2 The basic components of the Driver’s compartment. The walls were
it all seems to fit the Dragon kit, with one or two small blanked off with plastic card after strengthening ribs were removed
exceptions that were easily overcome. What follows is a visual from the hull moulding. Throughout the assembly I left the engine
guide to fitting the interior and finishing the full kit, pointing out bulkhead loose to help with painting. At this stage the basic frames
the pitfalls along the way. for the adjustable seats have been fitted to the bulkhead

38
 3 3

3 A view of the fighting compartment floor from the rear with the 4 The Drivers compartment with the seats installed along with
traverse mechanism for the gun visible. The square blocks down gas mask cases which are not included in the kit. These are
each side are the locators for the ammunition stowage, the nose Tamiya items with masking tape straps
cone of the shell sits in the holes at the centre of each block.

5 The gun seen during assembly . I chose to replace the jaguar
breech guard with the Dragon version which I felt was more
accurate. In the forground is the commander’s adjustable seat. I
added a new support and detailed the step with tread plate
6 I wanted maximum vision into the interior so I carefilly removed
the periscope vision slot covers and opened up the hull roof. New
sliding panels were constructed and fitted and a new hinged
panel cut from plastic. Notice that the incorrect hinges for this
panel have also been remove in preparation for fitting new ones.

5 6

39
 7 8 Relocated Relocated Intercom box
stowage box

Grab handle

Area filled to create flush finish

Gun cleaning rods

Stowage box from

Tamiya Wespe

New stowage box

Remote command
Grab handle
system

MG Stowage

New Intercom box

7 Inside the fighting compartment I discovered that the Jaguar
roof panel would not fit the Dragon hatch openings and it added
too much thickness, so I cut out the parts I needed from it and
fitted them to the roof. The rear panel had similar problems
caused by the depth of the armour around the big rear hatch. I
made a new plate and filled the gap between it and the lip of the
rear hatch
9 Jaguar give the position for the radios as the left hand hull wall
whereas photos of the actual vehicle show that this area was the
location for the transformers, the mounting brackets stiil being in
position. I scratchbuilt these two transformers and positioned the
radios side by side under the glacis, above the radio operators
knees.
8 The side walls of the fighting compartment showing one or two
modifications. I had to move several parts including the stowage
box on the top panel. The lower panel needed additional stowage
boxes, an intercom box for the commander and above it the
remote command system used to rely directions to the driver in
emergencies (I have no idea how it worked) Reference for all these
details came from www.kithobbyist.com/AFVInteriors/ which has
a superb collection of photos of the interior of the Aberdeen
Elephant, as well as many other vehicles - highly recommended.
10

10 Test fitting the interior panels into the fighting compartment.

I decided to paint the panels before fitting because of the
difficulties of access.

40
 11 The main gun with detailing added to
New guard added 11 the handwheels and another breech guard
Additional ‘cheat’
bracket made from brass rod. Hidden from view is
the operating lever for the breech which
was a spare Tamiya item from a PzIV.
Checking alignments between the gun and
the sighting apature in the ‘turret’ roof
showed me that there was no way the gun
sight would be correctly aligned to project
through the roof. Desperation forced me to
cheat by making a fictitious bracket to
move the gun sight backwards so that it
would at last fit.

12

Interior
DESIGN

12 & 13 Painting the side wall panels. The

interior has a colour split along the hull
where the fighting compartment bolts onto
the hull. Everything below this is finished in
a greenish grey colour whislt everthing
above is finished in the interior ivory colour.
13 The stencilling on the stowage boxes was
hand painted sing a dark grey instead of
black which would be too harsh.

14 Here is the front panel from the fighting

14 compartment, a standard Jaguar kit part
with only the gas mask cases added.
Unusually the mounting plate for these
parts appears in the pictures of the
Aberdeen vehicle to have been finished in
red oxide, rather than Ivory. Once all the
interior panels were painted they were
glued into the superstructure and then I
added weld seams along all of the joints
using Duro and these were painted to
match in with the rest of the interior.

41
 15 15 The completed fighting compartment
floor showing a good degree of wear and
tear. I was careful to leave the area
beneath the gun breech less worn because
it would be less accessible.

16 Looking directly into the front

compartment with everything dryfiitted in
place. The Jaguar kit does not include any
steering controls for the driver, so I had to
manufacture some from brass rod with
plastic handgrips which were shaped using
a drill as an improvised lathe

17 Another part not included is an

instrument panel. The Aberdeen vehicle
has lost its instrument panel, so I was
forced to make an assumption about its
location. Positioning it on the sponson
seemed like a good choice as I knew from
wartime pictures that it did not sit on top of
the trunking between the driver and radio 16

operator.

18 A detail showing the completed

17 18
transformers, which are sadly hidden once New Instrument
panel
the seat is fitted. Notice also the extra
detail added to the ‘trunking’ in the
foregound and the small labels for each
control
New steering Added details
controls

42
 19 20

19 & 20 Two more views of the completed

front compartment. Notice the diagonal
colour split on the hull side, this split is
quite loosely painted on the actual vehicle.

21 The 88 seen during painting. I left the

Interior
breech block separate to enable me to
paint and polish the breech. Notice the
damaged paint around the guard and other
areas of heavy wear.

22 The fighting compartment with all the

panels in position ready to have the weld
beads added to all the joints.
DESIGN
21 22

Weld beads to
be added

43
 23 24

25

23, 24 & 25 All round views of the 88

during painting. The upper part of the
periscope is still unpainted. The black
bellows arrangement controlling the gun’s
elevation that I assumed would be rubber
turns out to be made of a paper substance
and is in fact a pale cardboard colour, so I
repainted it after these picture were taken.

26 With all the interior painted and glued into position
and after much trial fitting the superstructure was firmly
glued onto the hull. Because the ammunition racks
crossed the joint line it was impossible to fix the shells
into the racks until the two halves were joined, This
meant having to fit the shells into the racks through the
rear hatch! Zimmeritting the hull is a lengthy process.
Here the layer of miliput has been applied to the panel,
and roughly spread to an even thickness
27 Close examination of the zimmerit on the recovered Tiger in our last
issue shows that it does not have a regular pattern, and therefore using
a saw blade gives far too regular an appearance. I prefer to use a
screwdriver blade, working from right to left in vertical rows over the
putty which you can see has been smoothed out using a little water
before I began. If the screwdriver blade is kept wet it will remove any
excess putty which can be cleaned away at the end of each row. I
leave the putty to partly dry before removing any excess from the
boltheads and pistol ports

26 27

44
Next Issue - Interior Design Part 2