Kingsman

The drawings will be Caterpillar proprietary intellectual property covered by copyright and you will be unlikely to find any freely available that would be sufficiently detailed for a scratchbuild. You may be able to licence them from Caterpillar, but at a hefty price you won't like. Allowing detailed drawings out in the public domain would allow third parties to manufacture alternative spare parts etc, which is why they are tightly controlled. This is why many kits don't use the official brand or product names - to avoid licence fees, and copyright lasts for decades. Most are also now laser-scanned in the real world from real units which is then converted to CAD. In The Old Days we would find one and take lots of photos using a ruler painted in inch or centimetre segments in each photo to scale from later, plus measurements. Which still works if you are a dab hand with old-school tech drawing or CAD. If you search for Caterpillar 621G Specs you will find some simple General Arrangement drawings and a lot of key dimensions on websites dealing with plant machinery, plus many photos. I don't know the likelihood of finding a real one in the UK to photograph. Used ones for sale all seem to be overseas. Finnings have been the UK Caterpillar agents for ever. Perhaps you might contact them for help?? It seems that both the M1070 and 621G are available as 1/50 scale pre-finished models, but where is the fun it that? And they are likely to cost you about £700..........

My somewhat obtuse point is that WO was apparently buying OD paint. Which puts a different complexion on the Crab, Firefly etc conversion colour debate. It may not be a binary choice of SCC2 vs SCC15.

However, in another thread on this forum about colours it was identified that a WO contract for Khaki Green 3 paint made some time after KG3 had become unavailable had been amended to US Olive Drab. Suggesting that the UK could make OD paint. We had the necessary ochre clay pigments fron Devon (as used in SCC2) and lamp black.

Those are definitely new pontoons, and they appear to be self-propelled. That would remove the need to bring up Combat Support Boats as tugs.

The US also developed their own copies of the Mine Exploder, as they called it. Although in their parlance that description also encompassed mine rollers. I believe the Crab at Bovington was a School tank there and is still a MkI, not a MkII. Which might suggest that MkIs predominated in units if that was the equipment being trained.

Have you another format for this file? I've tried to enlarge it after opening in a new tab but it will not. It just wants to download. I've tried downloading and saving it but my PC wouldn't recogise the file type and open it. I think there might be some other tank types in the middle of the picture. 6 RTR had a mix of Lights, Cruisers (A9/10?) and some Medium Mk IIs in this timeframe. The Mediums were passed on to 1 RTR later in 1940 IIRC.

Looks like you could be right. Look at these Griffon and Jaguar delivered new last year. France is a large country with varied terrain, and they have expeditionary warfighting aspirations. Maybe they think this is a good universal fit. Belgium are having their Griffons and Jaguars in a fetching shade of green. That being said, French Griffons are also seen in French NATO-flage. But the recent French deployment to Estonia including the old AMX-10RC seems to have been brown.

I would have thought that all Crabs were SCC15. There were only 12-16 Crabs in Italy in the last few months: not sure there are any photos. There is a PDF copy of the Osprey Crab book here: https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1543504647535.pdf but I find the numbers and narrative to be confusing and contradictory. Osprey books are too-often unreliable. It says that the MkII became standardised in May 44 and was issued after D Day, used in France, at Walcheren and the Rhine crossing, but photos suggest otherwise. Even the adjacent photo in the book from Dec '44 clearly shows MkIs. The angled hydraulic rams for the arms on the MkI are a giveaway. The MkII had a horizontal hydraulic cylinder on the right side only to raise the arms for travelling.

There have been 1/35 Crab MkI conversions from Legend and Resicast in the past. Legend is OOP. Resicast have a new owner in France. Their Crab MkI is still available. The Lanmo MkI is pretty new. No-one seems to do a MkII. As for numbers, I know no more than what is published. There were 3 Crab Regiments in NW Europe, a single Squadron in Italy and apparently a Squadron in India. That needed 132 - 140 tanks at full strength, plus attrition replacements and training vehicles. 300 seems reasonable. Some MkIIs were certainly produced and at least 1 survives, in Cananda. But I haven't seen any photos of MkIIs in action, even late into the war. The ones I have seen all seem to be at Chertsey.

The figure is definitely more LRDG than SAS. LRDG had a few Jeeps but they carried a lot less gear than and weapons the SAS as they did not operate independently. A single VGO gun for the front passenger would be typical. The Tamiya SAS Jeep is old and poor: why they haven't re-done it on their newer Jeep beats me. The Dragon SAS Jeeps are very much better but more expensive. You could recently get them for under £20 but they seem to be back to about £30 again. The Legend and Black Dog conversions are £30+. But in all these cases you would only need a few bits to make an LRDG Jeep. The Chevrolet 1533X2 is the final and iconic LRDG truck. The Tamiya kit. But this is indeed getting very hard to find and prices are getting silly. It needs new wheels as it still has old vinyl tyres which react with the plastic wheels. There are several stowage and upgrade sets for it. The Ford F30 from Thunder is the middle truck LRDG used. Didn't last too long as they were too heavy and too thirsty and 4WD wasn't the advantage it was thought to be. First of all they used the Chevrolet WA or WB. Wespe do a resin kit of this.

A bit more on Crusader towing cables. Stowage. A9, A10 and Valentine had this style of stowage on the trackguard. The cable must have been fairly slender. However, the Crusader and subsequent tanks deviated from this, presumably because of the identified need for a heavier-duty cable. Crusader's tow cable stowage is almost completely hidden along the inside edge of the right hand trackguard stowage bins, behind the hinged part of the top. But it is there. Except that you just don't see that area in photos. These photos are a MkIII but I presume the Mks I and II were the same. The yellow circles show where the 3 U brackets along the inside of the bins and a hook towards the back of the engine deck are located. There is a horizontal bar bolted to the right side of the driver's hood. Lacking any other clear purpose, it might be to tuck the tow cable under.

NO. Please read the words. I have explained. The M1 was a US-built clone of the 6 pdr. It had different wheels and a different barrel and a slightly different shield to clear the larger wheels. The photo I posted above is an M1. But it was just as widely used in N Africa by Commonwealth forces as the "real" 6pdr was. So it is an alternative. They are frequently mis-identified in photos. The Zvezda/Italeri/Airfix/Peerless/Max 6pdr is the right type of 6pdr for N Africa but the tooling is about 50 years old now. If you want a better kit then the Riich M1 kit (below) is equally appropriate for Commonwealth forces in N Africa and is a much nicer kit. You also get US and British ammo boxes plus ammunition and packing tubes with decals. The US crew will be no use to you.

I've tried etched straps and buckles with little success. Without annealing they are just too stiff. You get about 5 nanoseconds to anneal them before they disintegrate. Maybe I was using too much heat. And frustratingly fiddly to use.......... For footman loops I do like etched brass from Voyager etc. Make a little jig from card and strip to press them over. Dab of cyano and done. Some of the 3D sets from the likes of MJ Productions have the footman loops moulded with the tools and/or straps. And the strains of Black Betty by Ram Jam are now running through my head and conjuring a vision of manic mowing.....

Yes. Or a 57mm M1.

That would have been an M5, not an M3.

It is very rare to see a Crusader with a tow cable of any sort. Earlier Cruisers had a bracket on one of the trackguards to wind a fairly slim tow cable around. But Crusader did not have this. However, that Eureka type of cable is seen.

The very early MkIs had the long L/50 barrel with no muzzle brake, but there were very few of these made as we could not dedicate sufficient barrel production capacity at that length at that time. So service towed Mk II and tank Mk III had the shorter L/43 barrel with no muzzle brake. When we were able to begin making L/50 barrels the muzzle brake was introduced on the towed Mk IV but not on the tank MkV. The confusion comes from all M1 guns having the longer barrel with no muzzle brake. Many US-made barrels were also considerably thicker than British-made ones. Summary. Mk I - too rare, forget it (but long barrel with no brake) Mk II - short barrel, no muzzle brake Mk III - short barrel tank gun, muzzle counterweight, no muzzle brake Mk IV - long barrel with muzzle brake Mk V - long barrel tank gun, muzzle counterweight, no muzzle brake. M1 - long barrel, no muzzle brake. For ammunition, only the Mks IV and V could fire the later APDS rounds. These were not available in the N African, Sicilian and the majority of the Italian campaigns.

Turret texture is far too rough. 75mm turrets were much smoother than the 76mm ones but neither were anything like that rough. I wish people would get this through their heads........ Smoothly undulating would be a reasonable description of the surface texture. Not pebbledash. Even Soviet casting wasn't that bad! Tracks were not supposed to sag and are rarely seen sagged, although it was mechanically possible when pins became loosened from links (and theoretically should be replaced). Dragon seem to have included bogie brackets with casting marks from National Malleable Steel more appropriate to Chrysler than Fisher. Model companies still fail to appreciate that the Sherman assembly plants had different supply chain relationships and that bogie brackets and arms varied from plant to plant. Rather than just including the same ones in all.

It didn't take the RAF long to start repainting. Some had begun even before the end of the war. I suspect that Army Jeeps selected to be retained were probably repainted SCC15. Any that survived into the 1950s might even have ended up in Deep Bronze Green. If you see a glossy one in a photo with the new registration (see below) it will almost certainly be Deep Bronze Green. The white star was rapidly removed, although reinstated for Korea. This probably necessitated repainting. The 1945 Arm of Service and Divisional marking scheme seems to have survived for a while post-war, maybe as far as the Korean War. A similar scheme carried on post-war although the colours and codes changed. Notably for RAC where the different colours for senior and junior regiments in brigades all became the RAC red/yellow. Wartime census numbers became Equipment Registration Marks in 1950. So the white bonnet-side M serials became front and rear black and white number plates in the format NN AA NN. Vehicles in service at the change were re-registered starting at the Z end of the alphabet (01 ZZ 01) with new vehicles starting at B (01 BA 01). A was reserved for RAF vehicles (01 AA 01). So an Army Jeep in BAOR in Germany in 1945-50 would have looked very much like one from WW2, apart from probably being plain SCC15 with no star. As for units in Germany in that period - for unit and AOS markings - you'd have to do some digging.

Some ex-French PLS trucks are in civilian heavy haulage use too. IIRC the 2 former tank transporters originally belonged to Alsthom and have been fitted with new engines and transmissions as well as a host of other mods in the switch from 5th wheel to drawbar. The future of the Unipower tank transporter might have been different if the UK had not dogmatically pre-determined a PFI solution for HET. The FASTTrax KBR/Oshkosh bid was not technically the best - the tractor needed more BHP and a complete new trailer was needed - but the consortium gave the most confidence in delivery and support. The consortia backing the Faun and Unipower vehicle solutions did not give adequate confidence. Had HET been a straightforward purchase then the outcome might have been very different as the Oshkosh vehicle solution as bid - essentially original M1070 - was clearly short of the mark. And the PFI has come back to bite us big time as RLC reduced from 3 HET Squadrons to 1 and 2/3 of the HETs have therefore been parked-up for many years costing us £400 a day each. Although the vehicles and trailers are rotated to even out the mileage they are not being rented out for civilian haulage. And MOD owes the company the value of a HET destroyed in Afghanistan: their property, not MOD's. Reducing the contract would have meant buying out the balance of the lease period: many £££. I did a 3-year sub-lease of 18 of them to USAREUR in 2016 to make up a heavy lift shortfall in Germany, recouping at least £10M for MOD. Hobby horse stabled.........

Well that sounds like a complete goof by IBG. The Maultier box art clearly shows longitudinal springs and the real 817/917/018 had longitudinal front springs, not a single transverse one. Maultier conversions did not get new front axles.

As I said above I recall that re-using Bailey pontoons was Plan A. I left that project before the post-GSB developments were completed so that aspiration may have changed. There were some fundamental problems to longer spans caused by an officer on the team allowing the Company unauthorised changes to the NATO TDTC convoy spacing which meant fewer vehicles on long spans than the requirement called for. Only 1 tank on the bridge at a time rather than 2. So the bridge structure was somewhat under-engineered and Class 70 (i.e. tank) became a Caution Crossing at longer spans. Not sure if that was ever rescinded. I saw a Long Span constructed at Hurn during trials and walked it afterwards. It flexed a lot...... I don't recall an extension piece. But my dusty memory is recalling carbon fibre reinforcing cables. In the same way that MGB had a cable link reinforcement kit for MLC70. Vickers Bridging and later BAE Systems Bridging did market BR90 overseas, without success. Taiwan bought a single GSB set with vehicles but no further orders came there. So things you see under their banner might be developments we did not adopt.

The only appreciable difference between the 1939 model 917 chassis and the 1940 model 018 used for the Fordsons was a 1 inch / 25mm longer wheelbase. 158 inches vs 157. A hair's width in 1/72. The V3000 had the slightly longer wheelbase too. Any other changes would not be visible at that scale, or even in 1/35. Originally the hull remained the same with the longer rear deck but some cars were later further modified with an extension to the rear of the hull for a No9 wireless. I'm not certain if this eventually became universal. Only having a single radio car in a recce patrol could clearly be a problem. There was a single Fordson built on a shorter 134 inch 014 chassis for some reason. Used as a commander's car.

Your subject had a General Steel foundry mark on the glacis but the Dragon glacis shape is Continental. The contours there were somewhat different - although that has only relatively recently been appreciated. Shhh... don't tell them, Pike.......I You're really going to love me now - because I think you've fitted the FDA bolt strip back to front. This is the FDA on an M4A1 of similar vintage. Otherwise, you are as usual putting me to shame with the workmanship and attention to detail.......😁

The Unipower PLS was bought by France but was not used by the UK. The M Series Unipower truck was being touted as a heavy haulage platform for 20+ tonnes and as a tank transporter in the late 80's and early 90's but achieved little success and was cancelled. IIRC the BR90 trucks, the French PLS and a few tank transporter tractors for Oman were the only military sales. The UK used Scammell 8x4 DROPS for road work and Foden 8x6 DROPS for off-road work. Both now replaced with a MAN SV. 1 of the BR90 trucks, 11CP91, was fitted with a PLS for trials but went no further. The 11CPs were the prototype vehicles, originally with a different cab. The production vehicles were numbered in the 12, 13 and 14CP series'. The TBT's mechanism for unloading the No10 and No12 tank bridges works in a similar manner to DROPS/PLS. If you're thinking of this pontoon vehicle - actually a Scammell S24 although Unipower badged - there were only 3 of these, built for Thailand.