Its amazing the work the Germans did to try and disguise the panther into an American M10. They did a Google amount of steel work the turret had a lot of sheet steel used to changes its shape the front and rear as well they put a much shallow or flatter vent over the fan intakes. I'm not sure how effective it was as they did manage to knock out four and the others six retreated. One thing the tank was just a lot bigger longer, wider, higher and the tracks were a dead give away for anyone familiar with tanks. Still they say it did fool people at a distance. They took the knocked out vehicles to the rear for study but they say no ersatz panther survived the war. The captured vehicles scrapped, too bad would have made quite an exhibit at a museum. There's an article with lots of pics and write up on a guy's dragon kit upgrade. The guy use pieces of strip metal, metal pins and rods, guitar wire and copper wire replacing or adding lifting rings and handles it's a beautiful piece of work. I guess dragon on this kit rather than go separate detailed parts for the lift rings and handles the molded them on and they looked terrible. He sanded the off and added the metal parts to give the model better accurate details. The guy even made better looking hinge work and added the hatch locking mechanisms. In all very impressive first class work and probably saved a lot of money fabricating his own details rather than buying a lot of expensive after market detail kits. Lol, I love the figure he used, like there's lots of plastic after market figures these days but he used a metal cast figure he found and even did some customization. Oh another thing about the ersatz was the much longer barrel and muzzle brake that must have stood out wonder if they would have been better off trying to make it look like the M36 that had a similar hull that the M-0 had but the bigger turret with the longer gun would have blended in a little more, lol. Some commanders were said it was just the type of dirty trick the nazis would do.
