ESCI – 8324 – 8001 – Pz. Kpfw. III M

Description:

Pz. Kpfw. III.M

Unassembled plastic model kit in 1/72 scale of a German WWII Panzer III medium tank, M variant, which added some minor modifications to the L variant, adding a deep wading exhaust and usually Schürzen armour. It retained the 5 cm KwK 39 L/60 gun, common since the late J production models.

ESCI tooled the Panzer III series models in 1974, that year, both the M and N (ESCI – 8325 – 8021 – Pz. Kpfw. III N (N/M)) variants were released. Is not clear if the Flammpanzer gun was already present in these early sprues, but in 1977 a third variant was included, ESCI – 8327 – 8057 – Flammpanzer III (Pz. Kpfw. III Flammpanzer ), with the only change of decal sheet, because the only different part in this kit is the gun, and is present in the sprue of this base kit.

About the N variant, it added an extra sprue which included the 7.5 cm KwK 37 L/24 short barreled gun as well as the Schürzen side armour for both hull and turret. The Ausf.N were converted from several previous variants, so it’s legit to have an Aus.N from an M variant. About the Schürzen, it was added to both M or N variants, so the best release was the code number 8021, which included the extra sprue and was entitled as N/M. This is the same that Italeri did when reissued Italeri – 7041 – Pz.Kpfw. III Ausf. M/N, offer a kit that can be build as Asuf.M with or without Schürzen, and an Ausf.N, again with or without Schürzen.

The kit has some good features such separated pioneers tools, but the tow cable is moulded around engine decks. The hatches are all closed except the commander’s cupola, but without inner detail. A figure is included, which was ok at the time, but long ago behind standards. In this kit the wheels were done in two parts, but the initial vinyl tracks were ugly and hard to work anyway. This improved with the ESCI-Ertl release which included for first time the link and length tracks, which anyway are not great nowadays. Also ESCI-Ertl reduced drastically the number of markings in their release, from 3 or 4 to just one. Schürzen and supports parts are bit thick and not easy to fit.

Panzer III obviously became a popular subject of the 1/72 scale model kits, and although it took over 20 years to replace the old ESCI kit, almost every single release happened after has better features, except some of those “easy built” for wargamers. UM, Revell or Dragon are the popular choices for this topic.