Takom KV-5 Soviet Heavy Tank 1:35

[Mike]

KV-5 Soviet Heavy Tank
1:35 Takom

The KV-5 was a still-borne dead-end offshoot from the KV project that took its name from the initials of the Defence Commissar Kliment Voroshilov, and were a range of (mostly paper) projects coupling heavy armour with heavy armament. The successful KV-1 and KV-2 are the only variants that saw service due to changing requirements, doctrine and projects falling out of favour at the whim of the higher-ups. The KV-3 and 4 suffered a similar fate, which was never reaching even prototype phase before being passed over in favour of more advanced alternatives.

The KV-5 was in the Super-Heavy class, and would have weighed around 100 tons, sporting ridiculously thick armour varying from 120-190mm and a 105mm Zis-6 gun inside its blockhouse of a turret. Soviet doctrine called "Deep Battle" required heavily armoured less-agile tanks that could apply pressure to a besieged enemy without significant fear from the opposition's outbound fire. The KV-5 would have been one of the ultimate answers to that need, with a crew of six servicing the 105mm gun in a large turret, protected by heavy armour. The series was ended with the KV-7 consigned to the "paper project" bin and subsequent developments suffering the same fate after Voroshilov fell out of favour, with the alternatives renamed to JS prefixes after their leader Joseph Stalin.

The Kit
A new mould from Takom, this is a thoroughly modern tooling of this monster, and it arrives in a glossy top-opening box that bears a painting of a KV-5 bearing down on us. Inside the box are eight sprues, plus lower hull and turret parts all in a very dark grey styrene, plus another small sprue that contains a figure, which seems to be Takom's "thing" for most of their kits. Also present is the novel and helpful approach to sprue labelling, which is a stencil-style cut-out through the tab that makes identifying sprues so much easier. The package also contains a turned metal barrel, a small fret of Photo-etch (PE) brass, a small clear sprue, and a small sprue of poly-caps. A decal sheet and instruction booklet round out the package, the latter being printed in A4 landscape orientation, with a brown cover and cream pages within.

It is a paper project, so not much data is available, so Takom have erred on the side of caution and not added any internal detail. What is there is a full exterior that is nicely done, but lacking underside detail and any sign of pioneer tools that would have been fitted if it reached service. That wouldn't have been an issue if the decal options hadn't included and fictitious in-service options.

Construction starts with building up a host of wheels onto their swing-arms in pairs – sixteen for the road wheels, plus another two for the idler wheels, and a four-part drive sprocket. Another eight return rollers are glued onto conical mounts, and all that work is then put aside while the front lower glacis with towing lugs and headlights is built up, as is the rear bulkhead, then the smaller turret with its machine gun, and the driver's cupola. The upper hull is closed over with a flat blanking plate that is bereft of any detail, plus the front and rear panels, after which the bump-stops for the suspension swing-arms are added next to the axle locations. The wheels and their swing-arms are then fitted into their respective stations, which have hexagonal holes that match the hexagonal ends of the swing–arms, automatically setting the ride height. The tracks are individual links moulded on three of the larger sprues, with four sprue gates on each link, but no sink-marks or ejector pin marks to remove, so it's simply a matter of cleaning up the curves on the edges of each link before they can be glued in place, adding what appears to be substantial sag, if the instructions are correct. The KV-1 seemed to run with a similar amount of sag, but the KV-2 seems to have less pronounced sag, but I guess that as it was never built, that's up to you. You aren't given a suggestion as to how many links to use, so you'll have to build up a length and then wrap it around the wheels and shorten/lengthen it to suit.

The machine-gun turret is mounted on a raised podium, and sits next to the driver's cupola, in front of the main turret ring. The fenders run full-length, and mate with the upper hull via a number of pegs and by incorporating a section of the upper-deck that sits to the side of the turret ring. This should result in a strong join, which will be further strengthened by the addition of a number of straight and triangular supports along its length. Three filter boxes sit atop the forward end of the engine deck, and have PE grilles installed where the air is drawn in, and these cover up a set of louvers that aren't moulded particularly convincingly. Each fender is fitted with the stowage boxes at the rear, in between the three triangular supports, and these are moulded as single parts, but with moulded in hinges and lifting handles for good measure.

The main turret had a cupola for the commander, plus another mini-turret on top for a machine-gunner to perform close-in defence. The turret is built up from a to p and bottom half, with a gun barrel inserted from inside, and a pair of armoured vision block shrouds added on top. The cupola has moulded in vision blocks, and a lift-and-swivel hatch, which must be glued in place. The main barrel is turned aluminium with a short hollow muzzle that should be painted black to hide its shortness, and inserts into the mantlet, which has its hinge-points glued in behind it, attaching to the mounting points via a pair of poly-caps to give it a friction-fit that will allow the barrel to be moved and posed. The turret is made up from the large main part, a front panel onto which the mantlet glues, and a turret ring, with bustle-step at the rear. A set of crew steps run up the port side, more armoured vision-block shrouds, rear lifting lugs, and an aft hatch add detail to the turret, along with the machine-gun turret and commander's cupola, the latter fitting into a keyed hole, the former mounted on a bayonet-style turret ring. There are five large bolts on the top corners of the mantlet, which aren't moulded in, but are instead supplied on a flat portion of the sprue runners. These are to be cut off and positioned according to the scrap diagram, after which the turret is installed and twisted to lock it.

The final assembly is the figure, which is a small kit in itself. The head, torso and legs are moulded as one piece, while the arms, mask and flame-thrower are separate parts. He is wearing a protective suit, a gas mask, hood and long boots, with the flame-thrower held in two hands. A hose leads from the breech of the gun to a double tank on the figure's back, with a small bag to the left. The figure is a little speculative, but is quite impressive, and has a rather sinister look to it.

Markings
Two speculative sets of markings are supplied for two vehicles. Registration is good, and colour density seems acceptable, although it is always difficult to tell with white decals, which form the majority of the sheet on this occasion. From the box you can build one of the following:

• Soviet 2nd Tank Army, Kursk 1943 – Russian Green with red star and patriotic slogan on the turret sides, and vehicle number 16.
• Finnish Army, Enso 1944 – Tan/Green/Grey camouflage, Finnish cross and vehicle number 21 on the turret.
  

Conclusion
It's not often you get an injection moulded KV-5 in 1:35, and it's a decent model, given the lack of readily available information or even a prototype of the subject. The exterior is reasonably well detailed with the obvious exception of the underside, which is a bit of a "so what?" area anyway, and individual link tracks are always a plus-point in my estimation.

Recommended.

Review sample courtesy of

[Panzer Vor!!!]

Interesting vehicle which I never thought we'd see in a kit. I wonder if anyone will kit the 1000 tonne monsters that the German planned in '45

[Stashaholic Steve]

I've read elsewhere that the parts fit on this is terrible. Nevertheless it's a cool and very unusual subject, so I've taken a punt on one anyway and it is now waiting its turn in the stash.