Team

Editors

Heiner F. Duske

Profile

Heiner was born in 1944 in former Pommerania. As a young schoolboy his first contact with modelling in the early fifties was a Wilhelmshavener Modellbaubogen with a Torpedo boat, which had to be cut out, folded and glued. With increasing skills the ships became bigger and bigger and at least one of the big battleships were on the table, soon to be followed by his first plastic model which was from Airfix the Santa Maria, flagship of Christoph Columbus, shortly followed by the Arizona from Revell. One of the Airfix kits at that time was the 8-ton halftrack with the famous 88 mm Flak, which attracted him more than ships and planes, because he saw the first Bundeswehr vehicles in reality training in front of his grandparent’s house.

Then another period began: music from Chris Barber & Ken Colyer, later from the Beatles & Rolling Stones and many famous bands. Trying to imitate Monty Sunshine on the clarinet was the climax of his career as a hobby musician.

It was in the last year on university that he saw after many years of absence from the hobby a Sturmgeschütz III from Otaki in 1:35 scale and that was the start of his second modelling career. Many models of the German Army period between 1930-1945 followed in this interesting scale and when all were built in the late seventieth and no new kits came on the market anymore from Tamyia and Italeri, he enjoyed Bandai’s growing range of 1:48 kits.

Reading modelling magazines brought him in contact with Tony Greenland, who was a frequent author in Military Modelling Magazine and he admired Tony’s perfect models. Since that time inspired by Tony and other fellow modellers he began to superdetail his models. With only little reference material on hand he began with Tony to visit public and private collections of German WWII armoured vehicles, taking photos and measurements.

On one of these trips to the famous collections of Aberdeen and Fort Knox both had born the idea to share their growing photo collection with their fellow modellers and Nuts & Bolts was founded after a bottle of fine Jack Daniels was emptied on a rainy night in a lousy Motel in Kentucky. Some months later Vol. 01 on the Jagdtiger came on the market.

Motivated by the success both published the next volumes, but it was not possible to carry on with this amount of work. With new authors the concept of Nuts & Bolts changed from a sheer photo collection to a journal, which covers technical, historical and modelling background.

His input in Nuts & Bolts Journal is very parallel to his job in real life, where re runs his own company: Planning and surveiling a new project from the idea to selling the books. Beside that he is researching on his most favourite subject: Reconnaissance vehicles of the Wehrmacht.

Tony J. Greenland

Profile

As a child I used to make the old Airfix 1/72 scale model tanks, however even at this very early age (under 10) I only made numerous Tigers and Panthers! These were inevitably destroyed in “battles” fought in my front garden! It was not until my early thirties that this interest in modelling German Armour of WWII was re-kindled. An interest (or obsession?) that remains to this day! In this period with my two Nuts & Bolts colleagues we have travelled most of Europe and North America collecting information and photographs. We probably collected back in the mid-nineties more photos of Museum or privately collected German vehicles than any individual or group. From this collection, we super-detailed the rather poor quality of plastic kits (by today’s standards) originating largely in the 1970s. From this mania to improve the standard kits was born the concept of Nuts & Bolts.

From those who have supported us with the purchase of all volumes they will recognise the transformation of the journal. From literally a few pages of captioned museum photos to todays standards has been a remarkable journey, ably supported by such regular contributors as John Rue, Martin Block, Nicolas Hettler, John Nelson, Volker Andorfer, Karlheinz Münch and many others. Our special thanks must go to all theses persons, and those not listed for the continuing success of Nuts & Bolts. My own speciality of modelling continues to provide me with my evenings entertainment, even if those parts of my body (eyes, hands, motivation) that served me so well for the past thirty years are showing signs of accelerated decline! For the modeller can it get better than now? The Chinese manufacturers have provided us with an un-dreamed of selection of top quality German models to make, with a standard that we could only have dreamed of a decade ago.

It was always my belief that a model built with the best reference available at that time would always give greater satisfaction than straight out of the box with a misplaced reliance on the manufacturer’s ability to collect, assimilate and produce an accurate model including correct camouflage, details and history. We hope that our journals enables the historian, modeller and those interested in the technical information to fulfil their quest for accurate knowledge on any aspect of specific German Vehicles of WWII.

Tony Greenland, June 2010

Detlev Terlisten

Profile

Authors

Volker Andorfer

Profile

Joachim Baschin

Profile

Martin Block

Profile

Vinnie Branigan

Profile

Carlos de Diego Vaquerizo

Profile

Mario Eens

Profile

Holger Erdmann

Profile

I was born in Gießen, Hessen, in 1975. Since then, I have been living in Muecke, a small town on the western border of the Vogelsberg district in the centre of Hessen. After taking my A-levels, In 1996 I fulfilled the conscripted military service in Pz.Gren.Btl. 52 in Rotenburg Fulda. There, I was trained as an ammunition and fuel warden and dangerous goods driver. After that, I started to study. In 2010, I completed my studies with the grade of a diploma geographer. Since than, I have been job-hunting.

As a child, I experienced many military exercises of the Bundeswehr and US-Army in the central region of Hessen which regularly took place until the 1990s. Most probably because of this; my interest for military vehicles developed. I can remember that I have built some models in 1:35 scale (Italerie) and 1:72 scale (Airfix, Revell) at the age of five or six. My interest shifted to the model railway sector in the following years (Märklin 1:87) whereby the model railway layout was crowded by numerous Roco-Minitanks. At the age of 14, I bought the first 1:35 US-Army models from Tamiya. Several years later, I shifted to the Wehrmacht topic. Since then, I have built several hundred models in the scales 1:35, 1:72 and 1:700 (Waterline) with the focuses on Wehrmacht, US-Army, Red Army Bundeswehr as well as Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine.

In the course of time the interest on more reality grew up. Therefore, I collected hundreds of books and picture books over the years, in the last years also documents, military organisation tables and technical manuals. In 2004, I obtained several photos and photo albums. From this a collecting passion arose which still continues. Over the years, I collected more than 6,700 photos with mainly a technical aspect. In the past, several of these photos have been published in Nuts & Bolts issues. By the collecting of these photos, my interest in soft skinned wheeled vehicles of the Wehrmacht arose. Sadly, I came to realise that the available literature was un-satisfactory on this topic. To cope with that, I started the works on my internet site www.kfzderwehrmacht.de which got online in summer 2008.

At the moment, the main areas of interest are captured motor vehicles, the special superstructure variants (Kfz.) of the Wehrmacht and trailers. Further areas of interest are the camouflage finishes and markings (unit signs, tactical numbers etc.) of armoured vehicles of the Panzertruppe from 1939 to 1945.

Nicolaus Hettler

Profile

Peter Kwok

Profile

Laurent Lecocq

Profile

Jari Lievonen

Profile

Jari was born in 1962 near Helsinki. He inherited model building early on from his father who was not only a modeller but a skilful “do it yourself man”. Jari’s first model was Airfix Folland Gnat that received a dreadful all bronze coat of paint. Other air planes soon followed accompanied with toy soldiers and tanks. Later on the boys in the village where Jari was living got an idea of playing an outdoor tactical war game where 1:72 models were used as game pieces. This soon led to a veritable “arms race” and almost serial construction of models. It also meant a lot of hard work because the money for the models had to be earned by clipping grass, ploughing snow etc. However, there was still time to read history books and before he was 10 Jari had for example read the World History series by a Swedish historian Carl Grimberg.

In his late teens Jari moved over to 1:35 scale and started building armoured vehicles. The first was Tamiya Tiger I followed by Monogram Brummbär. Over the years many other models followed but Jari’s construction and painting skills did not evolve much. As most of the available models were German at the time it was only natural that Jari not only built German armour but also became interested in their history.

After conscription in 1981 and serving his 11 months in the army Jari begun his studies at the university in the faculty of Social and Political Sciences. Apart of his major, national economics, Jari also had the opportune to study political history at the faculty. Reading books on political history has been an important pass time for him ever since. After his studies Jari started to work in banking business, founded a family and built a house. All this meant a 10 year break in modelling. However, with the house came the hobby room that made it possible to start modelling again in 1993.

Jari joined the Finnish IPMS and took part in competitions. Competitions brought a new aspect to modelling; the need to improve both building and painting skills in order to perform better. This led to adaptation of new techniques like casting parts in resin, making photo etched parts at home, learning how to solder, learning how to paint with an airbrush and so on. Improving skills meant also more background work and need for better background material. Over time it also meant international contacts, first in the net and later on at Euro Militaire show where Jari became a regular visitor. At Euro Militaire he also got to know Tony Greenland and Heiner Duske. When Jari entered into the competition a scratch built Grille M, Tony and Heiner asked if he would be interested in assisting in writing a volume on Nuts&Bolts series about the vehicle. Jari said yes, but it took almost 10 years before he had to make good for his promise when the Nuts&Bolts team decided to publish their volume on Grille H.

John Nelson

Profile

I started out my interest in German AFVs during the mid-1980s, when I tried to assemble various Tamyia kits. I quickly found out that my modeling skills were left to be desired, but I still was fascinated by the subject. I didn’t know why I was fascinated but, William Auerbach, now editor of Panzerwrecks, best summed up the fascination when he wrote the introduction to his photo essay, “Last of the Panzers:”

“…I asked myself why German armour has long held its fascination for those of us predisposed to such things in the first place. I believe it is because they looked the part: capable, efficient and, above all, lethal. One can imagine the Panther, with its sloping armour and vaulting drive sprockets, ranging over the ‘75’ until the odds against them simply became overwhelming…” The first book that started my collection was Tiger, the History of a Legendary Weapon in 1989. Shortly after this I began to be familiar with other authors such as Thomas Jentz, Walter Spielberger, Uwe Feist, and throughout the 1990s, began to slowly purchase various releases from Schiffer Publishing and J.J. Fedorowicz. By the mid-1990s, with the advent of the internet, by interest in the subject deepened when I discovered George Bradford’s AFV News online. Finally, I was able to discuss and connect with other people who had the same interests. After enrolling into several discussion groups, I was able to get my hands on my first copies of original wartime documents in the form of a generous gift from Niklas Zetterling in 1998. He had sent me several copies of the issue records for panzers from the General Inspector of the Panzertruppe, and I was hooked. For me this was the key, as it answered so many questions that the books that I bought did not answer. At the same time, however; it brought up many more questions, and in 1999 I met Martin Block through a discussion group. Because of his vast collection of German language books he began to fill in major pieces of puzzle.

Martin also became interested in original wartime documents, and in early 2003, we organized a trip to the Bundesarchiv Militaer Archiv in Freiburg. From then on Martin would order copies from BA-MA, and I ordered microfilms from the National Archives in the US. Martin took great lengths to digitize many of these microfilms, while I was busy in finishing my Bachelors of Arts Degree in History at California State University, Fullerton in 2006. With Martin’s vast help, we’ve written several articles for AFV Modeling Magazine, and contributed to Nuts & Bolts Volumes 14, 15, 17 and 18. Martin’s efforts has also landed a contribution to J.J.Fedorowicz’s Combat History of the schwere Panzer-Abteilung 507 in 2003. In recent years, I have been sidetracked in researching the Sturmgeschuetz and Jagdpanzer Kompanien in the various of the Infantrie, Volks-Grenadier, Jaeger, Gebirgs, Luftwaffen-Feld, Marine and Fallschirmjaeger Divisionen. The complexity and vastness of this virtually unknown subject had forced me to put down writing for a couple of years, but recently I have taken it back up. At the same time, Martin has continued to be an indispensible part of the this community and the Nuts & Bolts team and deserves every accolade that he has earned.