Airfix White M3A1 Scout Car 1/35

[John]

This is a kit I've always wanted to build.

I remember looking at it in Woolworths when it came out and deciding to buy the 155mm howitzer first then get the Scout Car at a later date. For some reason that never happened and the kit eventually became hard to find. It has since been reboxed by Revell, Italeri and Zvezda (at least) but again they passed me by. Then, a few years ago, I was in Pastimes in Maryhill Road in Glasgow with my son and on the shelf was an unboxed but bagged Scout Car going for the princely sum of £7. It was too much to resist!

The parts and decals are fine but the instructions look like they have been water damaged. Still legible though. I wanted to do a Commonwealth vehicle so I acquired a set of Bison Decals which included markings for a Scout Car from the 20th NZ Armoured Regiment in Italy during 1943-45. This particular vehicle is finished in Light Mud and Blue Black, so it would look a bit different from the more usual Olive Drab versions:

The kit then went into the stash against the day when I needed a project away from my normal areas of interest to recharge the creative batteries. That time has arrived - the last 5 weeks have been spent dealing with a particularly forensic visit by HMIE to our school, so now that the half-term holiday is here I need a relaxing build!

More soon.

John

[John]

Some thoughts on painting.

The scheme designated in the Bison sheet is Light Mud and Blue Black. First port of call is, of course, the relevant Mike Starmer monograph, in this case "Sicily and Italy 1943-45" :

As well as a discussion about the colours themselves, Mike includes camouflage scheme drawings for a variety of vehicle types redrawn from official sources. Happily that includes the "15-cwt Armoured Truck", as the M3A1 was apparently known in Commonwealth service:

Extremely useful!

Mike says that, at the time of writing, an official sample of Light Mud had not been identified but he speculates that the colour was very close to SCC Shade 5 from BS987C. He also refers to colloquial descriptions of Light Mud as "dirty sand", "beige", "greyish yellow" and "light khaki". That sent me off to the paint box and I returned with a couple of examples of Humbrol 168 Camouflage Beige, or Hemp as we used to call it. Compared to the sample chip in Mike's book, the slightly darker acrylic version isn't too far away :

It's actually closer in reality than it appears in this photo, so I intend to use this as the base colour. I'll come back to the Blue Black later.

John

[stevej60]

Good luck with this John, one of my favourite WW2 vehicles.My local museum has an immaculate restored version on display.

[wyverns4]

Hi John,

I remember my father building this in the living room. Always thought it was a rather good looking kit and fancied a bash at it at some time. Nice choice of markings too!

Christian the Married and exiled to africa

[John]

Thanks

A bit of background might not go amiss here, especially for the less aged among us!

This was one of a range of very nice (for their time) 1/35th scale military models put out by the Japanese Max company in the early 1970s. I remember seeing adverts for them in magazines back then, sometimes credited as "Peerless/Max". I think Peerless might have been their American distributor. The range consisted mostly of US and Commonwealth trucks and command vehicles, I think the M3 was the only semi-armoured vehicle in the range.

In the mid-1970s Airfix released (IIRC) 8 of these kits under their own brand but with the original boxtop artwork. Airfix had traditionally used 1/32 as their scale of choice for their limited range of large scale military vehicles, so this was quite a departure. Presumably the kits were bought in bagged and reboxed with Airfix-style instructions. I don't know if the markings options stayed the same. In any event they didn't stay around for very long in Airfix boxes, a couple of years max if I remember.

Subsequently most of these kits have been released by Italeri, including 2 that Airfix never boxed, a Dodge ambulance and a Styr RSO tractor and Nebelwerfer. Some have also appeared in Revell and Zvezda boxes. Presumably Italeri have the moulds these days. They were state of the art in the early 1970s and are still nice kits now.

John

[Threadbear]

Most of these old Max kits are now reboxed by Italeri. These include the Chevrolet 15CWT, Chevrolet FAT gun tractor, Bedford QL portee and various Dodges, all excellent kits for there age.

Many of these kits have aftermarket available from the likes of Hussar and Eduard.

[John]

The kit is moulded in that shiny, hard dark olive green plastic much beloved of Japanese manufacturers so the first item on the agenda is to give some of the parts an undercoat. I assume that, regardless of the topside camouflage colours, and however often they had been repainted, the undersides and transmission remained in the original factory finish, most likely Olive Drab. Construction starts with these parts and a thin coat of Humbrol 36 Pastel Green has been applied to give a good base for the OD and suitable weathering:

John

[IanC]

I'll be watching with interest - I got this kit for my birthday when Airfix first brought it out. I did the Dodge WC later. All of them were really good models, although I seem to remember the figures were a bit ropey.

Ian

[John]

Anybody remember Tamiya paint markers? I still like the effect XF-56 Metallic Grey gives on small parts like this exhaust pipe:

I assume the textured area on the end is meant to represent insulation, so that will get a coat of dirty brown later.

John