About this detail of the Tiger
This kit was intended to build only tank 1331, the first Tiger assigned to Wittman. But it has enough spare parts to build any Tiger with a drum cupola and spare tracks on the turret. In particular, it can build S04 which is seen in the well-known photographs of Wittman receiving his Knight's Cross with oak leaves.
Fortunately, decals for S04 are provided in the Tamiya kit 35216.
The features of the Tiger were gradually changed. To model a Tiger accurately we need to know its build date. We can sometimes deduce this from photographs of the tank itself.
With S04, we have photos of the front and right side. We can see that its turret had two spare track link holders on the right side, and that it carried smoke candle launchers. These features imply a build date in May 1943, or very close to it. That tells us much about the features we cannot see.
But one feature remains in question. During May, the engine was upgraded. The photos give us no way to tell which engine would be correct. However, we know that this tank was delivered in July, so a later date is much more likely. I will therefore assume the later kind of engine.
The photos tell us one other fact about S04; it was a Command Tiger (Befehlstiger). These tanks carried additional antennas and storage. Fortunately, most of the parts that we need are already on the sprues, left over from the Late Tiger kit (6253).
Instead of a normal Tiger mantlet, S04 had an old mantlet from the cancelled Tiger (P) program. There was no thick area around the gunner's eye holes. The unused part A7 is close to what we want.
Being a Command Tiger, S04 had no MG in the turret. The hole in the mantlet was plugged. I used a piece of sprue to simulate the plug, which was visible in photos and therefore was not exactly flush.
This lovely shot by Vince Abbot shows us the pitted texture of the cast mantlet on the 'Bovington' vehicle. But more interesting, it shows the feature that is unique to Tiger (P) mantlets; the left-side bottom corner is cut out to avoid the Tiger (P) visors. The cut is slanted; presumably it is a section of a circle around the turret axis.
Therefore I cut one corner on the mantlet.
Tamiya provided a good representation of the markings on S04's gun barrel. The width is correct. But they drew the stripes as straight lines; since the barrel is tapered, the lines should be slightly curved. This will result in an imperfect join when the decal is wrapped around the barrel. Fortunately, the underside of the barrel had a lot of whitewash, so I can cover up the problem.
The plastic gun barrel in the kit has tabs that align it, but the metal barrel has no orientation marks. There are slots, as shown above, but they are part of a locking ring so they could be placed at any angle. Therefore I decided to apply the decal very early in the build. This would define an 'up' direction for the barrel, and later I could easily glue the muzzle brake and part A9 to match it.