Removable Begleit Tank Escorts

I've wanted to make Begleit tank riders removable for a while since I've seen them in the Late War catalog. I didn't want to have them always be glued/pinned to the tank, so I decide to do something different. I was originally going to magnetize them, but that would mean I would have to find ever super small magnets to fit into the riders as well as on the tank. this wasn't going to cut it for me, so I decided to have some pinning wire go between the riders so that they supported each other.

First off I needed a set of super small drill bits as well as pinning wire. I managed to have my neighbor supply me with both a 0.55mm drill bit and some 0.5mm wire rod.

Drill bit on the left, wire rod on the right

After laying the riders out on their respective tanks, it all boiled down to drilling (very carefully mind you) into each driver where I wanted the connection to exist between. Once the hole was drilled I inserted the wire and then superglued the wire rod in place.

You just need to rinse and repeat the drill/stick/glue steps to other end of the wire and always triple check that the riders will fit on the tank back. As you'll see below you'll see how I arranged my tank riders.

I went with them not being interconnected - I figured this would make them easier to put on and take off. With the way that I laid them out, this is turning out to be a relatively easy thing to do now. Without further ado, here are the rest of the pictures....

They see me rollin', they hatin'

This took me about 45 minutes to do (mostly due to me being anal about how they were positioned), so this is an easy task to do; Provided you have access to the drill bit and wire rod materials. Now I can paint these guys up to put some fear into my opponents!