Well, it's certainly a change. For a while I was thinking Tamiya only produced shades of grey and blue. This is my attempt at RAL 8000. The tiger itself is attached to PzAbt 501which was redesignated shortly after Kasserine, reforming later in 1943 to fight on the Eastern Front. I smell another Tiger project...

I arrived at my interpretation of Gelbbraun by mixing various combinations of Tamiya Acrylics. Took some time but I like the end product.

That last line is priceless, David; it certainly lends itself to the "road less traveled" theme.

Great work on the color theory and build so far. I'm very gratified to see your progress.

I feel before your wit as that camel before the barrel of that gun...

Indeed, Bernie. What strikes me in our supersonic age is how much tech has actually been lost. WW2 aircraft are certainly obsolete, but their mass production, maintenance, and operation remains a marvel to this day. From what I understand, it would be next to impossible for us to produce the SR-71 again. I once chatted with an architect who told me that, walking into a hotel in Atlanta, it hit him that he would not only have no idea how to design such a building, but he didn't know of a single construction firm that could build it.

The story of technology through the ages is not just a story of advance, but a story of unique chapters and lost knowledge.

It is hard to measure exactly how living under the mushroom cloud has affected humanity's group think and self-perception, or fathom what life would be like without it. When I speak to my students about the toxic effect of that fear and (paradoxically) becoming inured to it, I get blank stares. Somehow that is more terrifying to me than the image of children doing "duck and cover" during a nuclear drill.

So well said. Paradoxically, I think those petty fears are born of the greater fears. It's like the catharsis some find in horror movies: make believe fears allow us to keep our sanity in some odd way. Real fears--the ones of this age--are too much to handle.

And the bit about the devil, well, that could be straight from the preface of Lewis' Screwtape Letters.

I contend, Bernie, that humanity has had several basic stages of weaponry development, though that is probably simplistic. The first is a handheld weapon of some sort (club, spear, sword, etc.). The next, which overlaps the first in usage, is a trajectory (thrown club or spear, arrow, even a bullet or a bomb). The third would be the use of fire, again overlapping the first two. When in medieval times people used diseased bodies to spread epidemics (i.e., biological warfare), that took us to the fourth stage. The fifth stage is what we have now--devices that supersede impact and percussion and obliterate, combining "all of the above" when the after effects are taken into account.

Things remained in Stages 1-3 for millennia, went to Stage 4 (as far as we know) in the Middle Ages, and in the life times of our parents has gone to Stage 5.

We are truly a fateful generation. What chills me is that the Pax Americana (or perhaps better said, the Pax Nucleana) is losing its effect. Once humanity forgets and loses its fear--the fear that has held peace since 1945, albeit a tortured peace--what happens then?

Wow, that is indeed fascinating. It is also a commentary on the collective might of Allied industry. Fear of the U-Boat wolf packs kept many a sailor--and British politician and military man--awake at night. But the shipyard men in American thumbed their nose at them by building a Liberty ship in a single day. In the end, Hitler was shown to have underestimated the amount of materiel the West could throw at him, and the amount of men the Russians could throw at him.

As formidable as Tigers were, I'll take the 50,000 Shermans, thanks.