Personal WW1 Group Build: MkIVs & Whippet

[Kingsman]

Having concluded that there's nothing actually useful in the Airwaves sets for the Mk IVs, I'm going to get hold of the Eduard sets for the Tamiya kit.  That provides a Spud Box, replacement front vision flaps and some other parts.  I wanted to show some front ports with the smaller flap open.  I bought the Airwaves sets cheap "on spec" with no expectation that they would be useful as they are for the old inaccurate Emhar kits.

 

A few more parts from the Whippet set are useful.  I intend to replace the dreadful plastic rear stowage boxes - moulded as one-piece tubs in the 70's style - with thin wood and metal.  Airwaves provide the angle iron for this, but brass L section might be better: perhaps a bit thick-walled,though, compared to folded sheet.

 

Potentially most useful but actually most useless in both sets are the pistol port covers.  I wanted to show some of these partly open.  But they are completely the wrong shape, being symmetrically egg-shaped whereas the real thing are asymmetrical with a flat edge and 2 pronounced corners on one side.  I'm not confident that I could re-shape them consistently accurately and have them match the kit mouldings without them looking nasty.  You don't get enough to replace all the kit ports.

[Kingsman]

Here are some pics of the completed Whippet hull sides and track units as promised.  Notice the replaced rail and socket are the back of the cab RHS, and the awkward shape and placement of the spud rail to replace.

 

I was planning to leave the exhausts off until after painting, primarily to wrap them with thread to represent the asbestos winding, but that would have been troublesome.  Now that the moulded mounting tabs are removed there is just about enough room behind each one to get thread through as they sit slightly proud of the hull on the U bolt saddles.  These actually have a small boss where the bolt ends pass through, represented here with an etched nut.  The exhausts are 2 diameters of plastic tube, some copper wire and heat shrink with 0.1mm aluminium for the heat shields.  The heat shrink is for the front 90 degree bent pipe section, which is a larger diameter than the pipe below.  Although the heat shield pretty much completely hides this.

 

I'm going to leave the engine cover and fuel tank separate for painting as I think this will make masking the recognition stripes easier.  But the engine cover has a piece of the vertical cab front moulded to it, so surgery needed.  That does mean that I could loosen the exhaust U bolts from the inside to help wrap them later.  They are literally held in place by those: no adhesive.

 

The Zebrano Hotchkiss barrels turned out on closer inspection to be the original French pattern and therefore incorrect.  It would be possible to combine part of the barrel with the kit gun, adding the new recoil spring and offset fore sight missing from the French version and shortening the muzzle.  But I don't think it would be appreciably better.

 

Where the mud chutes meet the hull at the top they are held with a simple bent sheet metal bracket.  Takom chose to mould this onto both parts - badly - leaving an enormous gap.  I added some lead foil and new bolt heads to cover this.  Probably won't be seen.

 

 

[Kingsman]

Whippet structurally complete.  The fuel tank and engine compartment top are still separate for painting.  Now to put the MkIV hulls together.

 

Main things still to do are making new rear stowage boxes.  It isn't entirely clear how these are attached to the horizontal area behind the cab, but there must have been bearers of some sort underneath to clear the various bolts and plates there.  These are not represented in kit parts or the Airwaves etch.  More little fittings replaced with thin sheet metal.  I really thought we'd got past solid moulded hooks, tool clamps, brackets etc.  Bizarrely, one lonely bracket on the cab roof is provided as an etch part when an identical one on the cab side is moulded solid.  I've added the brackets for the little-seen canvas "mudguards", having drilled them to take some Grandt Line bolts which also help hold them in place, but these are quite vulnerable - as in real life - so I might yet show them bent or broken off.

 

I was very unimpressed with the fit and engineering of the parts for the cab and hull.  Too much fettling to fit and too many gaps.  Perhaps the Meng offering is better.  I can't see why the cab LHS is made of 3 parts: it could be slide-moulded in one piece.  Yet pieces like the spud rails and brackets should be separate.  Every single angled strip rivetted over a joint is moulded with a join down the middle.  These could have been provided as etched parts or separate plastic inserts.  I think their main mistake is using beveled joins with a tab behind.  These don't match up well and are hard to adjust.  Stepped joins would align better and still allow scale thickness plates.  I'm hoping the MkIVs are better.

 

[clive_t]

For all the trials and tribulations of putting it together, Peter, you've done a first class job on it. I await the MK4 progress with interest also.

[Kingsman]

Still working on Whippet as I felt that if I put it aside in favour of the MkIVs it might not get done.

 

While researching the rear stowage boxes - more about those later - I discovered that Whippets had 3 different variations of the track side plates.  The kit has the first type, as at Bovington.  But the kit also has the improved driver's vision slit (not as per Bovington) and some counting heads in photos says that a tank with this fitting would have had one of the 2 later side plate designs.  The second type, as per the museum example in Brussels, just had an extra flange extending from the bottom of the front mud chute to the idler mounting.  But the third type had extra angle iron reinforcing ribs above and below the idler and sprocket hubs and a few less rivets in those areas.  I presume there were problems with distortion of the "horns" front and rear where they were unsupported by the hull box and the first fix wasn't enough.  So I've decided to model the third type, which will be straightforward.

 

The stowage boxes have me stumped.  Detail photos aren't around and the ones that are available aren't really large or clear.  You do see photos of tanks with empty frames, often broken, and no boxes.  In these the frames seem to be L-section and not C-section.  In no photos are there any visible fastenings for the wood to the metalwork or for the metalwork itself.  So I think the boxes were constructed separately and simply held in place by the frames.  There is no external wooden framing, so I'm presuming an internal frame at the corners for nailing or screwing the joins.  The kit parts scale out at 15" tall, which is odd.  To my mind 18" makes more sense: 3x 6" planks, probably 1" thick - a standard timber size.  So that's what I'll do.

 

As there are no visible fastenings on the frames the ends must be made from a double-bent piece of L-section, with the lower L-section edges riveted to them underneath.  I bet there are triangular gussets or fishplates under there too, but I have no evidence.  I also bet there's a piece of L-section or flat strip across the lower front of the angled LHS box, but again no evidence.  There is no metal top edging. 

 

Attachment is equally mysterious.  Yes, there were the diagonal straps from the outside rear corners to the sides of the cab, but that can't have been all.  Both the kit and Airwaves etch sets show these as flat strip (the Airwaves ones scaling out to about 4" wide!).  This is possible, but it seems equally possible that they were made from round bar with an eye formed at each end: that would have been stronger, and matches the shape of the kit etch with a "blob" at each end.  The rear mudguard supports seem to form the rear lower frame support, and I suppose could have been bolted through.  On the RHS there is a small flange behind the cab with no obvious purpose, not repeated on LHS.  One photo of a damaged boxless frame appeared to show a diagonal brace under the RHS box, which would have crossed that flange and could have been bolted through.  But it equally could have been the inside front upright bent down.  There is no sign in any photograph of timber or metal bearers under the boxes.

[Kingsman]

Reinforced idler and sprocket hubs.  Simple L section and bolt heads - not rivets (84 of them!).  The lines of 4 rivets above and below the kit hubs are not there with these reinforcements.  I can only assume that the distance of the reinforcements from the hubs indicates double-skinning of some sort across the whole of the horns, or extreme enlargement of the bearing seats.  None of the photos I found showed the insides of the horns but it is logical that the reinforcement was applied here also.

 

[Kingsman]

Stowage boxes.  Thinnest bass wood I could get with plank joins scribed on and framed with the Airwaves etched parts suitably fettled as they were much too big.  I was lazy and just covered one box over with a resin folded tarp, one of Eureka XXLs with a corner bent up after a hot water dip.  I was happy with no sag over the edges as they can be very stiff.  The other box will have a selection of stuff in it.  I thought I'd found a Whippet with wooden trackguards forward of the cab suspended on wire struts, but closer examination of the grainy photo showed it to be a Japanese example.

 

 

[clive_t]

Looking very good even now! 

[Kingsman]

You know I said that I was going to park up the Whippet and get the MkIVs to the same sort of state?  Well it hasn't worked out like that ..........  Just couldn't stop picking it up and tinkering.  So now I'm calling it "done", with a couple of reservations: hold that thought.

 

So I've finished all the build and stowed it up.  The grey stowage items are a complete pack of Eureka XXL E-028 Universal Tents & Tarps Set#1 plus a piece from E-029 Set#2.  The cream ones are from the MR Modellbau British WW1 stowage set.  Petrol cans are Panzer Art RE35-147, which have era-appropriate markings.  I bulked out the middle ones with some "WD" ones, which I had more of.  I was wary of using the Texaco branded cans as I believe that Texaco-produced petrol was sold in the UK by BP at that time.  There are no BP cans in the set.  Texaco did open a subsidiary in Antwerp in 1913, but that would of course have been under German control in WW1.  1 gal oil cans are Ultracast.

 

The kit provides etched hooks for the tow ropes hung on the side plates.  But these look very flat and were in reality made from bent rod.  So I made a simple jig with 2 headless pins and bent some 0.3mm copper wire to make my own.  I think I will have a hawser on one side and perhaps some chain and bent hooks on the other.  They were easily bent and damaged. 

 

On the subject of damage I took one end hook completely off a track spud and replaced another with twisted thin metal.  One spud had both ends removed to leave just the wood block, which sits on the rear stowage.  I'm not sure Takom give you enough: there's a lot of empty rail, especially as there's a spud rail all across the hull rear too.  At the same spacing as the MkIV there are too few.  I couldn't work out how they fitted at first, but I think I've sussed it.  The MkIV grousers had a removable inner end to allow clamping-on, but no sign of this on the Whippet pattern.  I've concluded that the "rivets" on each side are in fact the ends of cross-pins with threaded holes, into which the end bolts fit.  A bit like the fittings you get with some self-assembly furniture.  Loosening the bolts loosens the clamps, which are fitted to the track links and tightened.  So where the end bolt is missing I've drilled out the cross pin too.

 

The stowage needs some rope, but this will come after painting.  I might add more fuel cans at the front once I've chosen the markings: tied across the sloping face was common too. But I don't want to hide the recognition stripes.  I want one with a fully striped engine deck.  Golikell (Go Like Hell) has this as well as stripes on the fuel tank top, and the kit has markings for it - and there is a photo of it with fuel cans tied atop the fuel tank.  But Gofasta also had the stripes on the lower front of the fuel tank as well as the top, and the DN mask set has a mask for that name.  So I think it will be Gofasta, with no more cans on the sloping front as they will hide the name.

 

 

Edited December 9, 2017 by Das Abteilung
unpossibly bad spelling (!)

[clive_t]

Lovely detail, looking forward to seeing it with some paint on.

[Kingsman]

That really WILL be a while off.  Need to finish building 3x MkIV first.  Then a mass painting session - lots of common colours. 

 

Whippets were all green, and one of the MkIVs will be green with the other in brown.  Beute version will be technicolour yawn scheme - although I still think it's an evens chance that the original colour might not have been over-painted but rather incorporated into the repaint instead of the German green or yellow/brown.  No way of knowing.  Masking the front horn stripes on this one will be awkward with the added reinforcement.  Bit of an own goal there ........  For anyone thinking of a Beute  Whippet, there were only 2.

 

I forgot to mention drilling out the Hotchkiss muzzles and filing a V in the fore sight blobs.  Even with the idler wheel moved out a notch I still needed 2 less track links per side than the instructions suggested.

[Kev The Modeller]

 Interesting kit this, like the additions and stowage 

[Kingsman]

Mk IV sponsons.  Aaarrggh!  Now I know how this guy feels.  I am seriously thinking about pulling the cords right now........

 

I did a lot of swearing at the Male ones and thought the Female couldn't be any worse.  How wrong was I.........  18 pieces for each each Lewis gun casemate, x4, plus the sponsons.  Note to Takom production design - you don't need to replicate every individual part that can't be seen!  Could be simpler and stronger.  Both types of curved casemate shields are made from 3 pieces, leaving awkward vertical joins and making it difficult to achieve an even circular profile.  I think they could have been made from 2 pieces, with just a small join top and bottom centre, and more strongly attached to the gun cradles.  None of the sponson faces have any locations, just the edge-edge joins - and you're often juggling multiple pieces at once and can't square it up until you have them all together.  I think the sponson shells could have been slide moulded as single pieces.

 

I left the Lewis guns out of the ball mounts as the Aber barrels will go in from the outside.  But in the Female casemates the gun is an integral part of the construction, and so if you're using the Aber barrels they need to be cut off before installing the gun.  Technically you need to fit the Aber barrel into the casemate construction as the barrel clamp is right at the inner end of the barrel, but that just makes construction more difficult by introducing a lump of brass in the middle.  So I may have to shorten the Aber barrels by a couple of mm.  I wanted to leave them off until after painting to preserve the blackened finish, which is nice.

[Kev The Modeller]

Top stuff going on here mate.

 

I'm looking at adding these to my stash, going to follow this with interest.

[SleeperService]

Some quality work so far. Very nicely done and Thank You for sharing your research findings as well. I'll be following with interest.

[Kingsman]

Well take a deep breath before tackling the sponsons, guys.  IIRC the male shell alone has 12 pieces excluding the 6pdr and Lewis mounts.  And not a locating tab or pin in sight, just edge joins: some stepped, some angled, some butt.  That could have been reduced to 6 or even 4 with slide moulding.  Female shell has a mere 5 pieces, which could have been 1, plus 4 pieces for the access doors.  And 36 pieces per side for the MGs.

 

The hull pieces go together better, but I wouldn't advocate following the instructions and building the hull box complete before fitting the track frames.  It isn't strong enough at the joins for that.  I built the track frames first, then added the hull parts to one side before mating the other side track frame.  But don't attach the cab front to the cab shell or you won't be able to get it in.  Attach the cab front to the track frames and glacis then add the cab shell, which will likely need taping down while the glue/solvent dries.  The hull bottom and upper and lower glacis parts need a bit of fiddling to get a good fit at the front.

 

The fuel tank needs to be fitted to the hull rear before that is fitted to the track frames: it won't fit afterwards.  I made that mistake and ended up building the fuel tanks piece by piece in situ.  Sides need to go in first.

[Kingsman]

The parts for the Female access doors below the sponsons don't fit well.  If you try to fit the locating ridges moulded on the rear of the door surrounds into the sponson apertures, it causes the parts to bow outwards.  I shaved off the rear locations and lined up by eye using the front ones, which kept them flat.  The doors are slightly too large too, and try to pop out.  They need a bit of filing around the edges and where the hinges meet.  The edges of these parts have noticeable mould lines anyway.  C'mon Takom: this is just square part engineering..........

[Kingsman]

So, lots of words in last posts.  Now some photos.  More words below.  Yes, more............  If I learned one thing in 32 years as a civil servant it was Olympic standard boring the pants of people with words!

 

General progress to date on the MkIVs.

 

The zillion-piece sponsons.  Just about square and straight.

 

The casemates for the Beute MkIV.  Note the awkward joins in the shields, here filled.

 

I had several thoughts about armament.  I chose a female for something visibly different.  The Nordenfelt 57mm guns re-fitted in Males don't look any different, and the ball mount guns remained as Lewis.  Not all Females got MG08s, but at least some did and I've found photos of MG08s in the front casemates and Lewis in the rear: so that's what I've done.  I haven't found any with MG08 all round - which just means I haven't found them, not that they don't exist.  These are Zebrano resin guns, which are OK - especially as you get half a dozen for under a fiver.  The other choice is the ICM WW1 German Weapons set, in which you get 2 MG08/15s.  I'm unclear if MG08 or 08/15 were used.  Some sources say that the 08/15 had a slimmer barrel jacket, but that would have complicated production and they look the same to me.  The spade grips of the 08 might have been easier to handle than hunching over an 08/15, bearing in mind that we took the butt stock off the Lewis and put a spade grip on. (As an unrelated aside, helicopter mount spade grips and ring sights were trialled on a Jackal commander's mount in response to user requests from Herrick.  Accuracy actually got much worse, but at speeds several times that of a MkIV).

 

Anyway, the Zebrano guns fit the kit barrel clamp once suitably opened out with a round file.  The vertical shield aperture also needs filing-out, but still needed cutting and re-joining to fit over the barrel.  These need filling where the side support tabs fit anyway.  More bad kit engineering. 

 

The Lewis barrel shown hasn't been shortened yet, and is therefore about 2mm too long.  It doesn't actually look too out of place.  As noted above, you could replace the entire barrel as intended.  Having to join the brass barrel to the plastic clamp probably isn't too much of a problem, on reflection: I thought it might complicate already-fiddly construction.  I'd do it that way if I did it again, I think.  I did goof with the ball mounts by not using the gun breeches: there's nothing to attach the barrels to and they're a very loose fit in the balls.  Plastic plug needed.  Don't make the same mistake.........

 

I think I've sussed how to simplify building the Female casemates, 2nd time around.  Fit the angle braces and pivot to the side pieces while those are still on the sprue.  Likewise the base pins into the bases.  Make up the guns and vertical shields: the shield locations are sloppy and need lining up by eye  Attach the side shield pieces to the guns, noting the tabs.  Cut off the pins on the rear angled brackets: you'll never line all 4 up this side of insanity!  Add the bases, using just the front pins for correct width spacing.  Lastly, add the shield centre section and square everything up, making sure to get an even curve between the 3 pieces.  Note that the locating slots for the side tabs are slightly different lengths top and bottom, but hard to see.  Get it wrong and there will be a step at the join.  Fill and smooth.

 

On which subject, tool tips.  I bought a glass file from the beauty aisle of one of my local Pound Shops (can't recall which) and it's really useful for longish joins and seams.  Wide, flat, rigid and not too coarse: easily finished off with fine wet/dry with no marks.  But it clogs quite easily, which brings me to another tool.  A file cleaner.  Sadly, I can't remember for the life of me where I got it.  At a show somewhere IIRC.  It's sort of rubbery resinous, but it cleans files a treat.  Yes, it wears down - but not quickly.

[Kingsman]

German use of Lewis guns.  Not only were they used on Beute tanks, but also by infantry units.  Two dedicated machine gun battalions were formed with Lewis guns, later disbanded and parcelled-out to infantry battalions.  So, where did they come from?  In a word, Belgium.  In 1914 the only manufacturer of Lewis guns was Fabrique Nationale at Herstal, near Liege.  A city captured within the first days of the war in the west.  The only user was the Belgian army.  Colonel Lewis shunned the US in 1913 because his gun was not adopted and set up shop with FN.  British use and manufacture didn't start until 1915, and I'm sure many of these were captured too.  The US woke up and caught up in 1917.

 

What I can't establish is whether FN carried on making the Lewis for the Germans.  Sources are silent on that point.  FN certainly operated under German control in WW2,  but in WW1 the German practice seems to have been to loot and pillage Belgian industry.

 

As far as the tanks were concerned, the Germans had no choice wth Lewis.  While I'm sure they could have come up with new balls for the ball mounts to take another weapon, they had no other weapon which would fit, MG08 being too fat to give much traverse or elevation.

 

Prior to the Lewis, some German units - especially cavalry - had the Madsen 1904 LMG.  Some sources say these were captured Russian weapons.  Russia certainly used them, in their 7.62mm rimmed chambering with a very curved magazine, and doubtless lost many.  But any captured would have stayed on the East to make use of captured ammunition.  Germany bought its own Madsens pre-war in 7.92mm Mauser with a much straighter magazine and these would be the ones encountered in the west.  The Madsen didn't work too well with rimmed rounds such as .303 and 7.62x54R.  By the time tanks were being captured there weren't many Madsens left to go round, Denmark refusing to supply more.

 

And there's an irony here, as British tanks very nearly had the Madsen: many favoured it, especially for its slim air cooled barrel.  But the magazine limited the gun depression and held 1/3 fewer rounds than the Lewis.  The British had a few Madsens, so it was a known quantity.  Known to be unreliable in .303, with too many feed stoppages.  A further reputed irony is that Madsen made a number of guns in anticipation of a large British order that never came, and that these were subsequently converted to 7.92 and sold to Germany.

 

Many sources say that captured Lewis were re-chambered in 7.92 Mauser.  I don't believe that for a second - especially if FN was no longer functioning.  That would have needed a new or re-bored barrel, a re-bored chamber, new bolt, extractor and ejector, modified gas port and modified magazines.  Not simple by any means.  At the start of WW1, the Lewis had only been in production for a year and only been made in .303.  Belgium chose that calibre, despite using 7.92 Mauser in its rifles.  While it was later made in 7.92 and other rimless calibres including .30-06, that was not done until at least 1917 with .30-06.  But Col Lewis would have designed for rimless .30-06 for the US, and FN might have had access to that design info.  But a factory production re-work line would have been needed, together with design engineering and testing.  I don't see that being done.  Germany would have captured Belgium's stock of .303 and possibly the means to make more, plus anything captured from us Brits.

 

Not that any of this affects the modelling.  Looks the same in any calibre.

[Kingsman]

Been fiddling a bit every now and again since Christmas.  Always seems to be something else more urgent or necessary to be done.  Life, eh?  But all the Mk IVs are now essentially complete apart from stowage and a couple of details.

 

The Female is still missing her Lewis guns 'cos I forgot to buy enough.  Initially I believed from some references that some late MkIVs were fitted with Hotchkiss, but further research has disproved this.  All surviving operational Mk IVs were supposed to have their Lewis swapped following the Hotchkiss switch but it was never done, although some Supply Tank conversions did have the front gun swapped.  And all the Hotchkiss barrels available are the Mle 1914 for French tanks, not the Mle 1909 Mk1 used by us Brits: so I got the wrong ones anyway!  Waiting for more Lewis barrels.

 

I gave up on the Aber Lewis foresights - those that didn't ping off somewhere.  They are truly impossible and just looked naff: 4 folds on something that is about 1mm cube when finished and they sit all wrong onto the curved barrels, being flat.  Foresights didn't seem to be universal, engagement ranges being very short.  One of the alleged advantages of the Lewis over the Hotchkiss was that the magazine held enough rounds to allow fire to be "walked" to the target, implying that the sights weren't used anyway.

 

The Male's fascine needs more bulk, and there was a timber baulk incorporated to rest on the unditching rails.  It will need to be chained around the final diameter, so I'll have to find some way of achieving that.  First time I tried it any chain remotely in scale just snapped under the tension.  I can't find any pictures of the retention and release mechanism.  There were fixed hooks on the glacis and movable hooks behind the cab operated from a lever inside.  Chains attached these hooks to the chains around the fascine.  But no photos of the hooks that I can find.  Make it up time.  I manged to squeeze a full set of spuds into the spud box (just!) after a bit of experimenting, and added another wooden stowage box forward of the spud box.

 

From the Eduard etch sets I only used the spud boxes.  The indents in the hull top for the plastic parts needed to be filled with strip and filler first. Not only are they more scale thickness, but they seem more correct.  The Takom ones have some odd triangular fittings on the front, and the Eduard ones are the same as those on the Bovington MkIV.  Oddly, the Eduard exhaust shield is far too small so I had to use the plastic ones, slightly shortened. 

 

I intended to use the Eduard cab visors so I could have some partly open, but they looked far too 2-dimensional.  However, I did manage to open the small visor in one plastic visor by thinning out the back with a burr until the outline was see-through and cutting carefully.

 

The Beute female has a few variations.  It had once been a Top Towing vehicle for supply sledges, and while the main towing gear has been removed by BKP20 they left the timber baulk which was actually attached to the hull.  Top Towing tanks only had about a foot of exhaust behind the silencer with the rest removed.  BKP20 have grafted a full exhaust back on with a sleeve over the join.  The top rails were also modified, but were damaged and removed and not replaced: the mounts are still there.  The rear additional armour was also damaged and not replaced.  I added the fairly crudely-done top hatch in the cab top.  At least one female had the front ball mount modified to take a T-Gewehr rifle, and I'm still toying with that: I'm assuming the wooden forestock would have been cut back to minimize the inboard length.  I imagine they had mounting trouble with the recoil, which was fearsome.  Now, the 13mm Tank und Flieger Machinegewehr would have been a very dangerous weapon to mount but came along too late.

 

So, all told I didn't need to use any of the now-discontinued MR Modellbau MkIV set, which will go on eBay. 

 

[clive_t]

Wonderful work, great to see this back on track (as it were )

[Kingsman]

Don't look too closely.  There's a reason that's a distant shot............!

 

Beute tanks don't generally seem to have carried much if any stowage, despite them cramming a dozen blokes inside.  The 2 gallon petrol can seems to have been an industry standard used in Europe too, although the Germans also used a triangular-section 20 litre can.

 

There are many pictures of British tanks with their roofs liberally stowed with petrol cans, despite the obvious dangers, so I think I'll do that on the Female - similar to one photographed in Peronne.  There are several model brands, but I've got Panzer Art resin with etched brass handles.  Nice.  They're the only people doing WW1 period branded cans, although the Texaco cans in the pack are not period (too late).  WD marked cans are also no good: it was the War Office back then.  But these can be fixed with file and filler.

 

Commercial petrol cans came in a wide variety of bright brand colours.  Over on Landships I found a thread which reckoned that WO standardised on red for petrol cans, with Paraffin, Oil and Water cans all being black with white P, O or W markings.  But there were certainly green cans too: large dumps of red cans would be pretty obvious to aerial observation.

[Kingsman]

Very limited stowage on the Beute Mk IV.  They don't seem to have carried much.  A couple of resin boxes with stuff in from Red Zebra, A Panzer Art crate, a couple of shovels and a couple of lengths of chain (still loose)  I've ordered some Panzer Art period German triangular fuel cans.  I don't believe the Germans would have been mad enough to stow petrol on the roof as we Brits did.  But I though I might build a wooden rack across the back behind the fuel tank and put some cans on that.  I'd already drilled out the shackle attachments and omitted the shackles, so that would be an ideal mounting point.  No idea if it was ever done.

 

Note the missing unditching rails, the patch-repaired exhaust, remnants of Top Towing attachment and cab roof hatch.

 

Haven't started on the British Female stowage, but this is the inspiration.  Strangely this tank sports a full set of mounted spuds, but still has an overflowing spud box with more.  Mine will have the spuds fitted and I'll have something else in the spud box.  But I like the fuel cans all over the roof, daft and dangerous though that may seem.  I count a dozen visible just in the space between the unditching rail and the exhaust.  Can't see the other side

 

The Male has been stowed up.  Haven't decided yet where the tow cable and bucket will go, so they're loose.  Spud box full of spuds with a hammer, spanner and spade.  Panzer Art and MR crates, Resicast 1 gal oil can, hand axe, oiler, another spade.  Rolled/folded canvas from Armo and Eureka.  The string visible at the back was used to hang a row of Panzer Art fuel cans which were then glued in place. I'll remove the thread and replace after painting.  As the can sides can't be seen I used WD pattern cans with the WD scraped and sanded off: on the top too.  One odd Shell one for variety: that will be red.

 

Edited January 29, 2018 by Das Abteilung
bad spelling!

[Kingsman]

The fascine for the Mk IV has been troubling me.  I gave up on the crib idea as very few MkIVs carried them and they're almost always seen on MkVs.  I might get hold of another broom and make a new fascine from individual fascine bundles, as per the original.  My current one is 1 big bundle.  It's also made from brush bristles shorter than the full width, so they overlap in the middle to get the width - causing it to bulge.

 

The official dimensions were apparently 10 feet wide by 4 feet 6 inches diameter: 87 and 39 mm respectively in 1/35.  From contemporary photos the width looks about right - wider than the tracks but narrower than the sponsons - but the diameter looks too small.  Measuring from photos they seem to come up about level with the "point" of the tracks at the front, which is more like 5 feet 6 inches: 47mm in scale.  Mine is about the scale 4' 6" but just looks too small.

 

Far more troubling was the attachment method.  I just couldn't find any clear photos but did find a cross-section of how the mechanism functioned (below).  Fascine tanks were specially modified with chain attachments and a release mechanism on the back inside wall of the cab.  Fascines were bound with 2 chains.  Chains from the front of the tank and from the release mechanism were attached to these with shackles.  Every model picture I found via Google had got it wrong: they all attached the fascine in some way to the unditching rails. No, no, no........

 

Then it struck me. Ding!  I had wondered what the 2 odd hooks instead of rivets on the front of the Bovington MkV were for: the fact that they turned out to be upside down didn't help.  Circled red in the photo. They are the fascine chain attachments, but should point downwards.  The chains are held in place by tension, but when released they just slip out and fall away.  On the MkV I believe the brackets circled in yellow supported the chains, but the Mk IV doesn't seem to have had these.  Ironically, Bovington have a fascine on their non-fascine Mk IV when they have a fascine-capable MkV parked next door!

    

 

So that led me to believe that the MkV must also have the cab rear release mechanism, although this may have been different on the MkV compared to the Mk IV.  But it's on the cab rear, and hidden from ground level view.  Not being a selfie addict I don't have a selfie stick.  But I managed to get my video camera up there using my camera monopod and lo and behold yes it did.  Except that most of it is missing.  Bummer.  Here's a frame grab.  It used the central pistol port, and there would have been a protruding hook attached to an inside handle and latch.  The piece of angle iron doesn't seem to be missing a bolt at the far end, and so I presume it's meant to be at that angle or was supposed to be free to pivot.  It has 2 small holes just visible and 2 small notches in the back edge, purpose unknown.  I believe the angle iron was there to prevent the chain jumping out of the hook before release.  The angle possibly aided slipping the chain under the hook.  The small holes might possibly have been for a weak lock wire.  Or not.  But it makes some sense.  The chain went under the hook against the already-latched release handle and the angle iron was bought up and lock-wired to the hook.  When the latch and handle were operated the lock wire snapped under the increased load, the angle iron pivoted down and the hook pivoted up thus releasing the fascine.  But I'm only guessing here.

  

 

So, fascine attachment mystery solved. 

 

This is about the clearest photo I can find of the front with a fascine on board (left).  There seem to be 2 loops of chain, one coming down from the fascine and one coming up from the hooks, intertwined with each other.  The line drawing above seems to show a join in the front chains.  In this case someone has inserted a piece of timber as a windlass and twisted the chain tight, presumably to stand bumping about on the rail wagons.  The fascine is pulled down further and is more squashed at the bottom than is usual.  And the timber baulk is just visible at the front at about the 4 o'clock position, whereas it should be at the bottom.  It was the point of rest for the fascine on the rails.  In the right hand photo can be seen the cab top/front hooks which retained the timber baulk to stop the fascine slipping down the rails until released.  So, a bit more work to do on the Male.

       

 

[clive_t]

Looking really good - I am very much enjoying this build and history lesson combined