Cats, Birds and Children

John Van Kooten
Wonderful idea!! And another large format diorama! Awesome! 👍
I'm very much looking forward to your progress on this one!

I have some more background information on this incident, for those interested:

On September 17th, 1944, this particular Dakota (Skytrain 42-108874 (code 7H-U) of the 306th Squadron, 442nd Troop Carrier Group (TCG), home base Chibolton, UK) was on route back from having dropped paratroopers of the 3rd Btn., 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR), 101st Airborne Division over Son, near Eindhoven, in the Netherlands. One of the LZ's as part of operation Market Garden. It was hit by German FlaK and it crashed on an open field North-East of Geel, near Larum in Belgium. As impossible as it sounds, it hit the Jagdpanther... the one and only object on that field.

The Jagdpanther was already disabled during earlier engagements. It wasn't disabled by the crashing Dakota. The Jagdpanther belonged to 1. Kompanie of the schwere Panzer-Jäger Abteilung 559 and was disabled sometime between September 10th - 12th, 1944, during the fighting in and around Geel.

All crew members survived the crash, which was also nothing short of a miracle. Of the five crew members the co-pilot and crew-chief managed to jump out of the airplane using their parachute, while the pilot, navigator and radio-operator survived the actual crash.

Here are two additional images from that scene, from right after the incident:

[img1]
[img2]

Patricio Mardones
woooowwwwwww, these images and information are so useful!!! i will use them as reference!!!!! thanks a lot!!!!!

Vitor Costa
nooooo Not here toooo you are chasing me???!?!?!?!?!
😄 😄 😄 😄 😄

Vitor Costa
(guys just kidding ok? Patricio is a very good friend of mine!!! and the bravest modeller i know!!!!!

Ulf Petersen
That seems to be a very ambitous project. I will follow closely, carry on! 👍

Matthias Weiss
Oh wow, big project! Nice idea to take a Guillow model... I like those, had some myself when I was a child.

John Van Kooten
You are most welcome, Patricio 👍 I'm glad it helped 🙂

Good luck with your projects and I will be following this one (and the other one you have going) with great interest!! 👍 👍

Matthias Weiss
Hmmmm.... that story with hitting the Jagdpanther is really interesting.
It´s like driving through a desert and hitting the one and only tree.
Or maybe that was a suicide attack.... 🙂 🙂

John Van Kooten
Haha! Indeed 😉 the field where the plane crashed was by no means a small field. They could have crashed anywhere. I guess that Jagdpanther just had it coming, twice! 😉

The location has changed a lot since. It is no longer an open field. This is where it all happened by the way: goo.gl/maps/4dNcg

Holger Kranich
I´ll follow this project for sure! A Jagdpanther and a downed plane? Thats my cup of tea!😄

Jonns Pfeiffenberger
I'm also in! Great idea and a big plane 🙂

Mike Kryza
Top idea - I'll follow.

Patricio Mardones
I felt that the diorama lacked a more precise interaction, so I decided to add this kit I had for years and the idea that you will have is that while the children play, parents greet a couple of Americans who arrive in the VW confiscated and bring provisions for them ...
The model is RPM, very complete with a complete photo-section, but with problems shims