Kingsman

I imagine we will see other T-34 variants if their other family offerings are anything to go by. I'm just surprised that it's taken this long for their SU series to morph into gun tanks.

Well it would certainly be useful if Tamiya followed other manufacturers and quoted the RAL or RLM colours their paints are intended to match. And indeed FS, BS and other codification standards. Originally 8000 with disruptive pattern of one-third coverage of 7008, changed to 8020 with 7027 in March 42 but not required to be immediately implemented for repainting. You can see from the swatch below that the contrast between 8000 and 7008 is not great. Bovington's Tiger 131 is painted in the authentic 8000/7008 scheme and from a few yards the difference is hardly visible. The beauty of RAL is that the colours have not changed one bit since inception. Ever. So a can of 8000 today is the same as a can of 8000 in 1942. However, some of the names have changed - which can be very misleading. 8000 was GelbBraun but is now GrunBraun. 7008 was GrauGrun but is now KhakiGrau. 8020 has remained Braun and 7027 has remained Grau. So it would seem that XF92 is intended to be RAL8000, although the pot lid colour looks more like 8020. XF93 is intended to be 8020 but the pot lid seems to be way off: it's more like BS Light Stone. And where are 7008 and 7027?? As for the 2nd edition of the the 3-colour scheme colours I can only assume that they are intended to be better matches. The pot lids look about right. I think my problem with Tamiya paints is that, like old Hunbrol and Airfix paints, they are actually fairly generic rather than specific matches. Compared to other paint manufacturers their range is very small at less than 100.

Here's another reason why the Tamiya kit may be considered superior to Dragon. Bogies. Always a problem in any form........... Here are the parts of a Tamiya bogie. 8. Looks OK to me, sanding dust aside. But from the right angle above you can see the hollow back of the inner HVSS springs. Wheels will be left separate for painting. On the other hand, here are the parts of a single Dragon bogie.......... 8+20. Yes, 28 parts each. But if made carefully it will articulate should you wish it to. And the separate tyres, thankfully in hard plastic, will make painting easier.

I'm sure the document below has been seen before. In it are 2 conflicting period photos. One suggesting that the entire interior was the exterior colour and another that seems to show the entire interior in a lighter colour. But this may be a prototype or test vehicle: it is a Mk1 but the FDA can't be seen https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1469&context=cmh However, I understand that MLW received supplies of automotive components including gearbox and final drive assemblies for Rams, Sextons and Grizzlies from the US M3/M4 supply chain. Many M3 FDAs were certainly made by Mack. In that case they would have been received in the US standard factory interior colour, which would have been white for both M3 and M4. As their location below the gun and under the nose rendered then effectively invisible would they have been repainted? You can see in photos that the driver's compartment and controls are the exterior colour, but the gearbox and FDA are well hidden. In which case I suppose we might ask ourselves whether it really matters if it can't be seen.

The Mission Models sample does look very much like Desert Pink Z1. I would hang on to it as that colour. Their advertsising for Light Stone shows swatches very much like the Real Colour, so you might well have a mis-labelled bottle. I note that they label this colour as RAL 61 rather than BSC 61. Real Colours have come in for a panning in some quarters and some are definitely "off". Their Desert Pink is almost BS Salmon, for example. I read somewhere that the current UK Light Stone colour used in Afghan and Iraq is exactly the same colour as the WW2 version and to my eye the Real Color is a close match - accepting different eyesight, monitors, graphics cards, camera sensors, file save formats and monitor colour value personalisation. We don't all necessarily see exactly the same thing. The Life Color is way off. It's neither Light nor Portland Stone. It's more like uniform Khaki Drill, if anything.

The AFV Club Australian Centurion has a metal barrel with plastic fume extractor for a Type B, but doesn't come with the side plates so making a British Mk5 OOB is troublesome. Eduard do etched brass ones but I'm sure plastic card could be used. The 1967 Sho't Centurion kit also has the metal barrel and comes with the side plates. As it's pre-IDF upgrade it can, as far as I can see, be built OOB as a UK Mk5 by omitting the M2 MG mount and US antenna base(s). If you get a 2nd-hand kit you might find it also has a metal L7 barrel: the first edition came with this extra. One point to note about these kits is that the wheel rims are moulded as part of the vinyl tyres provided, which is a bit odd and may have long-term problems for paint adhesion. This is done to allow the circumferential rim reinforcing ribs to be depicted, impossible with injection moulding. You might want to think about replacing them. Someone (Firestorm?) does resin replacement tyres, but £££. Best value is the Panzer Art resin set if you can track them down. Don't get the Legend set as they don't have the ribs. Brach do a nice set, and I believe the MR Modellbau set is still available.

That's the engine decks about done after fiddling with them on and off for about 3 days. Fit of the resin parts isn't great and most of them were warped to some extent. The fit of the etched parts isn't brilliant either. But as I noted at the top, I'm not using them on the kits for which they were intended so some fit issues were not unexpected. The M51 set is designed for the Tamiya kit but I'm using on Dragon and the M60 set is designed for Dragon or Asuka and I'm using on Tamiya. I messed up shortening the M60 deck to fit the A1 hull (it's designed for an A4) and had to replace some parts with plastic card. The M60 deck was actually straightforward as it's all resin apart from the brass exhaust shroud. Take an exhaust pipe and just dump it over the side.......... There is a flapper on the end which you can't see here. The M51 deck was a complete PITA with those etched brass vents, Every slat is a separate piece. Lord knows what the neighbours thought about the frequent vociferous swearing that resulted. The left hand one with the slats over the exhaust was, to quote Baldrick freely, more of a PITA than a PITA who is professor of PITA at PITA University........... A jig is provided to assemble that part but it's very hard to get it all square and neat. I haven't succeeded at all well there, but it will just have to do. The exhaust pipe needed a lot of work as it isn't actually a consistent diameter and has quite a hump meaning that the vent section wouldn't fit without a lot of filing and sanding of the pipe, which is a single-piece casting. In reality it was a commercial truck exhaust - the sort of thing you'd find up the back of a US semi tractor cab - complete with chromed guard, painted of course but often peeling. The thing that surprises me most here are the engine choices: 2 different ones Here the timescales are a bit sketchy as to which came first. Israel had prototyped the GM replacement for the Cummins but decided not to adopt it - but did fit it to the M60s supplied to Chile. Chile had chosen a Continental engine which it fitted quite slowly from 1990-95 and didn't complete the whole fleet. So they actually had 3 engines in service as 18 M51s retained the Cummins to the end. Supportability nightmare........ But if the GM in the M60 came first (I believe it did) and Israel had already engineered it, why did Chile not just adopt that? If the Continental in the M51 came first why did Chile not specify that for the M60? I guess we will never know and I guess most of us won't care: I can't shake off having been involved in equipment support concepts in MOD for several years before I left. The rear bin parts were all badly warped and wafer thin in places. Neither kit provides these, although to my mind the Dragon kit build standard should. The Tamiya configuration is too early for it but the Academy kit correctly has it. I managed to sort of straighten them in hot water but had to make one look repaired to deal with the wafer thickness. I've got 3 Shapeways 3D printed bins which are very much better once sanded smooth and I haven't decided yet whether to use these (centre). The cheapskate in me says these kits have cost me enough already without allocating yet more parts to them! The fittings underneath are for the track tensioning wrench.

In his M51 build Bullbasket suggested that the Tamiya kit is streets ahead of the others. Here's an example of how. The nose of the Dragon kit quite simply doesn't fit - as long as you want to fit the bolt strip, which of course you must. The result is that the nose is slightly too long but it doesn't really show. On the other hand, the Tamiya kit has 16 - yes, count them: 16 - ejector pin marks on the outer face of each lower hull side plus 2 more on each rear extension piece. In a piece of complete lunacy Dragon give you a lower hull with squared-off sponson undersides, which they have you trim to fit the cast front profile. This you will never do without some filler. You then add the shaped front trackguard sections without any positive locations. But they also give you square-cut front trackguards which will fit perfectly well without the surgery....... The Dragon cast texture is perhaps a little overdone. But on the other hand the Tamiya texture is very under-done: there really isn't any. In my case both were addressed by the application of liquid poly and brush texturing. Here's an interesting comparison of the Israeli implementation of the French CN-105 gun in the M51 and the Argentine version in the Repotenciado from another build. These 2 tanks might have faced each other in action if the Beagle Channel dispute had become a shooting war. Israel used the larger "T23" 76mm turret whereas Argentina used the extended Firefly 75mm turret. Israel shortened the gun barrel to 44 calibres and used new ammunition with a smaller cartridge case in a smaller chamber, but still had a massive muzzle brake. Argentina used the standard ammunition in order to keep compatibility with their AMX-13/105 and SK-105. The gun designation of FTR57/44 might also suggest a 44 calible barrel, but it is obviously very much shorter: closer to 34 calibres and with a much smaller muzzle brake. But then with HEAT the muzzle velocity has little impact on terminal effect, but does result in a lobbing trajectory and longer flight time. No APDS for Argentina. Muzzle blast must have been something else with a full cartridge from a barrel roughly 2/3 of the design length (L/50)...........

Gorgeous model. I have one in my stash I intend to do as a CS in the same scheme. This has given me inspiration. Although, I'd better leave it a while until people have forgotten just how good this one is!

Damn! That's another one for the M50 variant build list. I've seen frontal shots of what could at a glance be M50 with cast hulls but those all proved to be M4 composites. For VVSS M50s I'm currently planning M4 Composite and M4A4T. Now, how many of those M4A1 M50s went through the Cummins and HVSS rebuilds to emerge as definitive M50s is a question. Cast hulls of both types were definitely preferred for the M51 programme (perhaps oddly with the larger ammunition to stow) and M51s were certainly far more homogenous than M50s, with all but a dozen or so being on M4A1. That being said, I firmly believe that the large-hatch cast hull Chilean M60s are the tanks converted using the 5 Chilean-supplied turrets and M51 hulls. Only 60 M50s were available so 5 M51 hulls must have been used. Large hatch cast hulls would have been 76mm tanks and so would have become M51s, not M50s. The fact that small hatch cast hull M50s were supplied to Chile suggests that my question above is answered and that there were indeed some IDF small-hatch cast hull HVSS Cummins M50s. Photos suggest that Chile received M60s with large and small hatch M4A1 hulls, M4 and/or M4A3 and M4A4 welded hulls.

I think we're clear that Shermans of all types could and did carry the M2 in Commonwealth service. Each tank was supplied with one boxed in the On-Vehicle Materiel along with 2 unmounted M1919s. But as the war progressed the M1919 is increasingly seen as the bulk and unweildiness of the M2 became apparent. Tanks delivered direct to theatre in the Middle East all seem to have been issued with an M2. In the early days of Sherman in the desert the Luftwaffe was still a considerable threat, diminishing after Alamein. I think there is perhaps a question as to whether tanks delivered to the UK and prepared at depots here were routinely issued to units with the M2. It is interesting that the 76mm turret introduced the rear stowage location to dismount the weapon out of the way, although the weapon is rarely seen stowed here. In an interesting opposite to the Sherman, every Grant was issued with an M1919 on a cupola mount but this is only occasionally seen in photos. With its unique and somewhat clumsy ammo belt spool mounted above the gun it too was quite obstructive to the commander. The cupola MG calibre debate in the British Army settled on 0.30/ 7.62mm as the post- war standard until very recently when some CR2 began to be fitted with RWS mounting 0.50. And if you look at the various UOR protected mobility vehicles bought or adapted for Iraq and Afghanistan there are more armed with GPMG than with HMG or GMG. The caption in the top photo is interesting as the author comments on the similarity of the camouflage without understanding that there were specific camouflage painting diagrams for each tank type which were supposed to be followed. So they should indeed look the same!

While I was waiting for the Tamiya M51s (yes, plural - watch this space…..) to arrive courtesy of Model Hobbies, I thought I'd make a start on the 2 Dragon turrets. Which turned into essentially finishing them. Fit of top and bottom was poor on both, needing a lot of filing and sanding. Some welds needed to be restored with stretched sprue and pyrogravure. I elected to use the kit canvas mantlet covers and found that the awkwardly-placed joins could be dealt with by filing and brushing with liquid poly to blend. The pistol ports are separate parts which needed to be blended in all round with filler. A casting number was added to the M51 turret with Slater’s lettering and Chilean welded inventory numbers to both with more Slater’s lettering. Having done all this I brushed Humbrol liquid poly over both turrets, working it with the nylon brush from the bottle. I prefer this for cast texture to Mr Surfacer. Mind you by the time I was finished I was at 30,000 feet with my own icon on FlightRadar! One thing both Tamiya and Dragon missed on the M51 is the odd piece of armour plate between the turret hatches, covering a hole cut in the turret roof to get a couple of extra degrees gun depression. The 60mm mortar was mounted on here when carried. Chile didn’t get the mortars although the tanks retained the base and most had the travel lock. The M51's gun barrel is from MR Modellbau. The scissors mount for the 0.30 Browning was a PITA as no-one makes it. All Chilean M51s had it, although it is an Israeli mount. The 60mm mortar precluded using the central MG pintle, which became its travel lock, so a new mount was needed. Although IDF liked the tubular swing mount for Brownings and later MAGs, for some reason the M51 got this unique scissors-type mount. All IDF M51s with the mortar fitted should have had it but pictures are rare. Test of my meagre scratchbuilding ability - and ability to find pinged small pieces on the floor! The correct gun cradle itself is in the MiniArt "US MG" set (in reality an IDF MG set). In that set MiniArt give 2 very nice 0.30 Brownings with moulded barrel jackets and slide-moulded muzzles, but also 2 where they expect you to roll your own etched brass barrel jacket around a plastic barrel. A bit daft. I used an RB Models barrel instead. The cradle is just held on with blu-tack now. Chile had an on-off-on again relationship with the 0.50 Browning ranging gun but they are rarely seen in operational photos so I decided against. The 5 M4A1 turrets provided by Chile had applique patches, left in place but cut back in Israel to clear the conversion mantlet extension. They also had no loader’s hatches. Israel had its own loader’s hatch to fit to non-hatch turrets, very similar to the factory version but with a raised surround. Dragon goofed this on their M50 as they give a factory flush fit hatch, which M4A4 never had. Fortunately the Shapeways M50 detail set has the correct hatch and surround, fitted here. Springs are guitar strings, partly unwound. I didn’t have all the M50 turret parts so the commander’s cupola is from TMD from the parts box. The smoke grenade launchers are also from the Shapeways set, drilled out. The M60 barrel and antenna bases are from Greg Buechler’s set. Browning MG and mount from Zebrano with RB Models barrel. The Dragon M50 turret has the machined lower edge which is certainly more typical on M4A4s than on other species, but rather than mess up wrapping it with plastic strip and trying to blend in with filler and texture I elected to leave it. I might re-visit that but it will be much harder with the turret fully dressed.

I say "almost" as the Chilean Shermans were the last in operational service anywhere in the world - except for 3 Argentine Repotenciado upgrades used by Paraguay until as recently as 2018 and a handful in Argentina with mine rollers into the 21st century. They left service in 2002, some 7 years after Argentina withdrew the Repotenciado and 57 years after the very last Sherman rolled off the production line at Pressed Steel Car's Hegewisch plant. Like most long-surviving - even long-suffering - Shermans they had become FrankenShermans over time. But they represent the ultimate configuration of that sometimes-maligned tank more than half a century after it first appeared. So this is my next project. Another double build and more FrankenShermans: a theme is developing……. This build involves an ex-Israeli M51, so I start by apologising to Bullbasket as he has an IDF M51 build blog running right now. Although his is an early version and mine will be very late. And we’re using different base kits: newish Tamiya vs Dragon. This pair will be the afore-mentioned M51 and the M60 version of the M50 unique to Chile fitted with the Israeli 60mm HVMS gun. A quick bit of history, culled from Tom Gannon’s book on Shermans In The Chilean Army. Chile had acquired some surplus US 75mm M4A1E9s in the late 1940s and used them until the mid-70s. By that time there were growing tensions with Peru, who had acquired some T-54s and T-55s which completely outclassed the old Shermans. Now, 30-year old FrankenShermans in their 3rd or 4th lease of life are not necessarily the most obvious choice in the mid-70s to counter this threat. But this was the start of the Pinochet era, Chile wasn’t in many countries’ good books and as a result they had been getting pally over military kit with Israel, who were happy to deal with them. The success of Israel’s upgunned M51 Shermans against T-55s was well known. Israel was taking them out of service, Chile was familiar with Shermans and Israeli Shermans were optimised for desert conditions: Chile has a lot of desert. So a deal was done. Although the Israeli Shermans actually had different engines, different guns and different suspension from Chile’s old M4A1s so I don’t know just how far the familiarity went……. The first buy was 119 M51s. These were all unmodified very late “final” configuration, and all appear to have been on large-hatch cast hulls. However by 1990 the Cummins engine was becoming unreliable and unsupportable so a new Continental engine was installed in 100 tanks together with engine deck modifications to suit. This will be my model version. Later in the 1970’s Chile fell out with Argentina and was actually invaded by Argentina – for a few hours. Concerns emerged that the M51’s 105mm gun might no longer be sufficiently effective. Tom Gannon’s book says against Peruvian T-62s: but Peru never acquired any T-62s and still has non-upgraded T-55s to this day. Whatever the reason, Chile wanted something cheap with more armour penetration. Israel offered the newly-developed 60mm HVMS gun and Chile was convinced - although going from a 105mm HEAT round to a 60mm APDS might seem a retrograde step and Chile remains the only customer for that weapon. To carry the new gun Chile ordered yet more ex-IDF Shermans, 65 M50s this time re-designated as M60. They received an assorted bag of large and small hatch hull types. The M60s also had a new engine installed by Israel, but a different one from the M51 with another different engine deck. IDF had chosen a GM engine to replace its Cummins, but never went ahead with the change as Shermans were going out of service. So this was Build Plan A, which I’d had in mind and in the stash for several years. Dragon M51 and M50 kits with Greg Buechler’s conversion kits. Conventional. Greg’s excellent conversion kits are OOP now but FC Modeltrend have just released an M60 conversion. I can’t attest to its quality and they do get a mixed press. But now, having read Tom Gannon’s book, there is a Build Plan B which looks like this. Is that a hand up at the back of the class? Yes? Why are there 2 M51s now and no M50? Well it’s like this. Sherman gun tanks were in very short supply in Israel by then and only 60 assorted M50s could be found. So Chile provided 5 75mm turrets from their old M4A1E9s to allow 5 new-build M50 conversions to be built about 15 years after the originals. These were built on what appear to be M51 cast hulls, making a unique configuration not used by Israel: at least I'm not aware of any IDF cast-hull M50s. At least 1 of these was a small-hatch hull and at least 3 were large-hatch: I don’t know about the 5th one. So rather than make yet another conventional M4A4-based M50 I decided to do one of these unique oddballs. Tamiya M51 hull crossed with a spare Dragon M50 turret I bought on eBay. A degree of luck may be required here as these parts were not intended to be used in this arrangement.

Without wishing to divert the thread much further nor enter into a debate on the ethics of war, which are subjects for another place............................ It's a finely judged issue and getting it wrong gets you a one way trip to The Hague. Just because Bad Guys do Bad Things doesn't mean the rest of us should sink to that level. I spent several years during Op Herrick buying all UK military and some police firearms and it was an issue that vexed us still even then. Introducing the Combat Shotgun, for example, In essence, if a 0.30 round will provide an incapacitating wound then a 0.50 is unneccessary overkill. But if a 0.50 is all that is available at the time............... And that was the essence of the argument. Any projectile less than 400g should not contain any explosive or other harmful substance filler. 0.50 API breaches this, but is intended as an anti-materiel round. Although in a fast contact the best ammunition to use is always the one you have loaded. As for incapacitation, post-WW2 it was considerd that 80 Joules energy dump into the target would provide incapacitation or potentially prove lethal. Latterly that has been revised to 200 Joules, one reason why 7.62mm is making a re-apearance for DMRs as 5.56 won't carry that energy much past 300m - 200m for an M4 or clone, maybe 100m for the CQB versions. As for the quad-mount 0.50, German forces lobbied for its users in the ground role to be tried for war crimes. But the victors make the rules........... Indeed they objected to any use of the 0.50 in the ground role - it was apparently a frequent POW complaint - and made little or no use of their 13.2mm MG131 in the ground role in WW2. Their WW1 13.2mm TuFG never made it into service in WW1 in common with the 0.50 Browning. Of course that position ignores well documented use by German forces of the single and quad 20mm FlaK in the ground role, including with explosive rounds. But back in the room to the original question. The 0.30 was easier to use and generally considered more effective for close protection, the primary use of cupola weapons as the Luftwaffe was generally absent for close support in Italy and NWE.

The M2 was a bulky weapon and quite difficult to operate in the ground role in the cupola, being intended for elevated AA use with essentially only the commander's head exposed. I'm not sure it is correct that 0.50 ammo was not in the supply chain. But having a single ammo type on board for 3 weapons would certainly be useful. The M1919 was certainly handier in the confined space of the cupola and got in the way less. The mount carried a 250 round box compared to the M2's 50-150, although it was consumed more quickly. And yes the 0.30 was a more effective anti-personnel weapon with its higher rate of fire and easier control. However, the 0.50 had longer effective reach and could deal with semi-hard targets, notably AT gun shields and field defences. Additional M1919s were seen on US vehicles too, in addition to M2s. There has been a long-standing belief/rumour that there were British concerns that the 0.50 round fell under the 'unnecessary suffering' rules of the Geneva Conventions, Hague Conventions and St Petersburg Declaration and should therefore not be used in the anti-personnel role. I'm not certain there is any hard evidence for this. A small number of M2s, maybe as few as 50, were retained in storage post-war and mounts were designed for some soft skin vehicles to carry them for AA use. They saw no use until 1982 when they came out of storage to arm ships deployed to the South Atlantic with AA CIWS. Some were deployed with ground forces for AA defence. Since then the M2 has had a regular place as a vehicle and dismount weapon and some thousands have been procured since the start of operations in Iraq. These were Manroy-built weapons (now FN Herstal UK) and latterly had the quick change barrel invented by them and later copied by others.

No it isn't.

Nicely done. It has always troubled me why the UK never saw the need for this sort of weapon system while many other armies did and still do. Once the Stormer Starstreak passes out of service we will have no SP SHORAD capability. The prototype still exists in private ownership. There was another prototype on the G6 SPG chassis. I had fully expected Takom to produce that too. The only production version was the handful of Finnish ones on T-55 hulls, later transplanted to Leopard 2 hulls. Mental splinter camouflage painting job......

As Bullbasket said, simple answer is no. Many books on the subject: Tom Gannon's being most succinct and affordable, with apologies to Dr Robert. If you want to model IDF Shermans you really need a book. As far as major versions are concerned I could probably pull a list together. I have about a dozen in my build stash that I've already researched. Although I'm steering clear of the original 75mm tanks because they're not really any different to any other OD Sherman apart from the markings. The big problem is the almost infinite number of combinations of parts used, not all factory original to type. So even within a sub-type, say small hatch cast hull M51, they are not all the same. Close enough was good enough. Let's not forget that they used parts of every M4 variant produced, except direct vision types and the short-run A6. And not necessarily in their original combinations. And even the M4A4, the most homogenous type, had over 80 possible production variations over time. Others had more.

IDF designated the M1 Sherman (76mm VVSS) and the Super Sherman (76mm HVSS) separately. Most of both types were eventually converted to M51 Shermans (not iSherman as Dragon and others have called them) similar to this. M51s were built on small and large hatch cast hulls and a handful on welded hulls. Some still had the early 76mm turret with the large loader's hatch.

Where do you think I get mine from!

M3 production had ceased by the end of 1942 so anything supplied in 1943 is likely to be second-hand, potentially refurbished. As far as I know there was no M3 remanufacture programme. However, the possibility of some undelivered new-build tanks still in depot exists. Grant production actually ceased in about July 42, and only 1 was retained in the USA. So it would seem that any M3s supplied in 1943 would have been Lees, not Grants. A lot of US M3 series had already gone for conversion as M31/2/3, something over 500 petrol and 400 diesel. Plus almost 500 petrol for conversion to T10 Shop Tractors, AKA CDL, inc some M3A1. The use of A1s not otherwise considered combat-worthy implies a shortage of petrol M3s. It is perhaps surprising that the 109 M3A4s weren't put to better use. With the UK receiving M4A4s throughout 1943 there would have been mechanical compatibility with using the M3A4 for CDL. There were 335 UK CDLs built so would it be logical to infer that 252 were on the additional Lee hulls and the balance on Grants already supplied? There were Grants in the UK which had ceased to have any real purpose for training etc by 1943. Differentiation would be important if for no other reason than the need to relocate the radio and operator's position into the hull in Grants. It was already there in Lees. Potentially the Lees needed the driver's periscope fitted.

I like the Vallejo Model Air KG3 for KG3. A nice brownish green. Matildas were first finished in KG3, Mks I, II and some III. But most if not all Mk IVs and possibly some Mk IIIs were finished in SCC2 as Matilda production continued for about a year after the colour change. However, I believe that many Matildas - notably those fitted with the various Australian mods - were repainted in a darker green.

I don't find Tanks Encyclopedia to be fully trustworthy (sorry, guys). They don't do original source research but gather data from secondary sources. How much analysis they do is unknown. There are errors in data and some of the artwork is suspect. That being said, the number of threads regarding colours on this and other forums is legion and all artwork is speculative and subjective to a degree. They never state the source photo or research for their artwork, but are not by any means alone in that. I would like to see all such artwork in books, on websites and in decal sets routinely supported by the source photos and/or other rationale. Then we would all be able to judge. A block of numbers would have been allocated by BPC to Lima for the Grants originally ordered for cash. It is perhaps a logical assumption that those numbers were allocated instead to the M4s that these became. However, by the time M4 production came on stream Lend Lease was active and all production received Ordnance numbers at factories with WD numbers being allocated at Ordnance Tank Depots by BPC staff. So quite possibly / probably a different number range. I believe that Baldwin over-produced Grants by 185, possibly to make up for the lack of Lima production: I believe the original order was for 500. So potentially some Lima numbers were transferred to Baldwin. Grants were outside the Ordnance numbering system as they had no Ordnance designation and so probably all had WD numbers allocated at factories rather than at depot. I'm not convinced therefore that any Grants went through depots, but that cycles us back to the Hunnicutt numbers. AFAIK the UK did not habitually recover and recycle unused numbers once allocated, hence the many sequence gaps, and did not change allocation to entirely different vehicle types. Different Marks of the same type from the same source, yes. While Hunnicut is still probably the most reliable M3 data and is from original sources, there are some clear discrepancies with his numbers. I hadn't seen the Anzac Steel page. Most interesting. The date disconnect for ex N African vehicles going to the Antipodes had intrigued me as it didn't make sense. This puts it straight. But raises again the question of the 100 'other' M3s in Hunnicutts figures.

This thread is still alIve! Just in the paint shop queue..... I had second thoughts about the Sherman commander's hatch and decided to open it. But ended up making a mess of trying to open it up. Fortunately I had a Resicast replacement in the bits box and fitted that instead. I might try a couple of figures - which I always shy away from. The Miniart commander looking at his map board and compass in the cupola and a figure from their armoured car crew stood behind the turret looking through binos. Infantry officer calling for fire and the FOO working out the directions for the Centaurs' guns. While doing this I realised that I had indavertently fitted the wrong mantlet cover. I'd configured the tank for an M34 mantlet and fitted the cover for the M34A1. So that had to come off and be replaced. Resicast give you both in the wading set. This time I used a Dragon plastic barrel as I couldn't separate the resin one without risking breaking something that might later be useful and fitting a metal one would have been more difficult.

Applique is really down to personal choice and reference photos. At the risk of another bad pun its application was patchy (groan!). The hull patches are easily made from 1mm plastic card. File or sand the edges coarsely to represent the flame cutting, brushed over with liquid poly. Factory fit hull side patches were welded all round whereas field fit were often not weded at the bottom because of the sand shield flanges. Replacing the section of hull MG mount cover rail on the front applique patch is straightforward, but this wasn't always done in the field. The cover was rarely used except for shipping, despite being an urgent modification. The turret patch is more problematic. On which subject, no A4s were fitted with the thickened-cheek turret. Dragon and RFM got this right but the Asuka kit of the VC with the thickened-cheek turret is completely bogus - although their other A4/V kits are correct. Many/most/all of the 1,600-odd early A4s retained by the US for training and subsequently remanufactured and shipped to the UK were fitted with the applique kits during remanufacture. So somewhere between a third and half of A4s had factory-fit applique. M34A1 gun mounts were also substituted, making early A4s suitable for Firefly conversion. The Firefly in the Brussels museum is a remanufactured DV A4, for example. As for track 'armour', M4 links were mounted with the guide horns against the hull and the horns were welded to the hull. Whether every one was welded is an open question. I suspect that on a run of connected track links only a few were done, and some would have been hard to get to. As for other track types, I don't know, Churchill tracks are seen on Shermans, especially Canadian, but these had a flat inside face with no horns.