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With my Sherman and Whippet finished, time to start the first project of the year. I’ve had this kit in my stash for well over 5 years now. Picked it up second hand at the local scale modeling show swap’n’sell for around A$20. I’ve been opening the box, looking at it, and then putting it away for all that time. Parts have been scavenged for other kits (stowage for my recent Shermans, radio aerial mount for my Sherman Mk 1 Hybrid and of course tea drinking man). Thought I should have go before I started losing pieces - and there are a LOT of pieces. Prototypical Bronco. First action was to check all the sprues that were actually loose in the box - luckily nothing missing. Just in case I carefully repacked it in some zip-lock bags - I suspect it’s going to take me awhile to build. Also in the box, a set of Voyager photoetch, which may come in useful as the Bronco etch has been bashed around a bit. I don’t intend to go all out - just use what is absolutely necessary. I also have a second turret - I gather there were issues with the initial US boxing and Bronco provided a replacement corrected turret. However it appears to be identical to what came with the kit, so I have a spare. My intention is to complete it as option 2 which is “Chieftain” of C Squadron of the Reconnaissance Regiment, 5th Infantry Division, British Army, Germany 1946. I even managed to find a photo of this tank on-line at https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/us/m24_chaffee.php. The kit was reviewed on BM back in 2012: There are also useful reviews at the Perth Military Modelling Website (PMMS) https://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/bronco/cb35068.html and https://www.track-link.com/reviews/2181. To get the ball rolling I started by seeing how easy/hard the track would be. The individual track links come in sets of 12 of which there are 14 (so thankfully a few spares). So I started with a set of 12. Removing them from the sprues and subsequent cleanup was really easy. They do a clip together reasonably simply, I sort of “angled” to clip each one together. I found doing 6 together and the joining the two sets of completed links easiest. In a matter of minutes it was done. A reassuring start.

Named after the „father of the US Army armored forces”, General Adna Chaffee, the M24 - arguably the best light tank of World War II - was a fast, lightly armoured vehicle, capable of delivering relatively large caliber direct fire from its excellent 75mm M6 gun. This retained the ballistic capabilities of the Sherman M3 gun, despite the thin-walled barrel, developed for the M5 variant, intended for use in the B-25H Mitchell attack aircraft. The first vehicles reached Europe in late 1944, replacing the vintage M3 and M5 Stuart tanks, still armed with a 37mm gun. Christened in battle during the December Ardennes struggle, the M24 proved to be very effective and highly reliable. While the M24 was roughly (2 ft shorter and a foot wider) the size of the M4 Sherman medium (30 ton) tank, it retained a low weight of just 18 tons (the tiny M5 Stuart weighed 15 tons), making it better suited for a landing craft delivery, for crossing the smaller weightload bridges, and (thanks to the 15in wide tracks) negotiating deep snow and wetlands in Western Europe in the spring of 1945. Below you can see the M24 size compared to the Stuart, M4 Sherman and British Cromwell. The 117th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized) underwent its baptism of fire in North Africa. Then the unit passed through Sicily to Italy (up to Rome), from where on 15th August 1944 it was directed to the south of France (Operation Dragoon). The Squadron then conquered Alsace, receiving the first M24s on 26th February 1945. Four days later, the last M5 Stuart left the unit, whose tank company (the F Troop, as there were also four M8 Greyhound troops there) become fully M24-equipped. In March 1945 they went from Marmoutier via Baerenthal and Pirmasens, and on the evening of 30th March, they crossed the Rhine between Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. In April, the conquest of Rhineland continued from Heidelberg through Krautheim, Heilbronn, Stuttgart and Ulm, leading the 117th directly into Austrian Tyrol. There the squadron celebrated VE Day in Reutte. Crewed by five men and powered by two liquid-cooled 150hp Cadillac V8 engines, the original M24 was armed with a single 75mm gun, two 0.3” MGs and the external pivot-mounted 0.5” AA Browning. Almost all of the 4,700 vehicles manufactured by Cadillac and Massey-Harris in 1944-45 went to the US Army. After the war, the M24 became a mainstay of the US occupation forces in both Germany and Japan, where its light weight allowed it to reach places inaccessible to the heavier M4 Shermans. Replaced during the Korean War by the M41 Walker Bulldog, several thousand of the withdrawn M24s were delivered to various forces around the world, with France (1,250), Italy (520), Britain (300), Turkey (240), Taiwan (230) and Belgium (220) being the main users. In at least two countries (Taiwan and Uruguay), the M24 was still in use in the first decade of the 21st century. The 2014 OKB Grigorov tooling is considered the world’s best Braille scale M24, light years ahead of the ancient (both dated 1974 incidentally) Hasegawa 1:72 and Matchbox/Revell 1:76 kits. The R72001 boxing (the first styrene kit of this Bulgarian company) contains 234 parts on 4 sprues. So again (after Unimodels Stug and Panzer III) some 85 parts for every inch of the hull lenght - a massacre ! Luckily (for me at least) there is no PE fret to bother with. The only drawback encountered is the width of the sprocket wheels – when glued OOB they are about 1.5mm too narrow to fit in the corresponding lugs in the tracks. So they have to be widened by 1.5mm and then everything fits. The decals are provided for three US tanks from the 1945 campaign in Germany and several (5 individual names and 5 registration plates, although not all correspondingly) French tanks from the 1954 Indochina War. All are plain Olive Drab, so I decided to build a vehicle from the 117th CRS, which in 1945 overpainted its tanks with large transverse stripes of No. 8 Earth Red (~ FS30117). The model was made OOB with the exception of the Aber 0.3 mm steel wire antennas and a transparent window fitted into the (kit-supplied) driver’s windshield frame. The turret was made rotatable by adding a horizontal bar under it and cutting two notches in the hull upper deck. US white stars were taken from the original Grigorov sheet. Unfortunately, on the (rare) pictures of the 117th CRS M24s from their 1945 activities I did not see either serial numbers (e.g. US 30126435), or unit markings (e.g. 4C-117R-F-6). Neither on the hulls (front or rear) nor the fenders. So either the tanks were unmarked or US Army censorship intervened there. The paints are (as always) Humbrol enamels: 155 for No.9 Olive Drab and 70 for Earth Red, painted with Italeri brushes. Then the Vallejo acrylic matt varnish was brush-applied overall. The pictures are taken with an LG smartphone. Comments welcome Cheers Michael

The unit in question received its first M24 in the last week of February 1945, still in France. They entered Germany in March and reached the Austrian Tyrol in May. AFAIK two M24s from the 117th CRS are the only Chaffees credited with destroying the PzKpfw VI Tiger. Unfortunately, in the photos I have not seen either serial numbers (e.g. US 30126435) or unit markings (e.g. 4C-117R-A-6). Neither on the hulls (front or rear) nor the fenders. Were these tanks unmarked or was it just an intervention by a censor? Cheers Michael

Hi Pals, I finish this small project, and here we can see the model as it has been finished. I think the result has been worth it, because above all, the original tracks were "horrible", with no hint of quality, all along with the antiquity that the kit had, made a revision necessary. The other improvements, have given a touch something different from the one I had when I finished it at the time, because the barrel gun is longer than the kit, and the revision / restructuring of the equipments, I think they have changed the aspect of the model as a whole. I added some snow with another new product, and a pair of antennas, because now I have where to expose the models, without risk to break them. Thanks for watch and comments and always. Some pics closer....

Hi Pals, Here is a new small project of the "Renove Plan" to which I am submitting some of my "old" kits ... lol. Today I decided to "attack" the M24 Chaffee de Italeri, which would be the second improvement attempt on him, and I would say it will be the final one. This time it will be a "third party" improvement, because basically I have acquired some new tracks and a barrel gun as well. Undoubtedly, the most ominous part of this model, were the tracks, which is the heel of Achilles of all these oldies that had saved, because the material with which they were made, besides being really bad, has turned out to be super-fragile . The cannon is also easy to replace, and it will surely provide quality at a minimum cost-effort. I have opted for some Bronco tracks, because the Friuls, I find excessive in terms of price for the kit in question. They seem to be quite good, and especially with a reasonably easy assembly, at least for me. Some pics with the model finished, at it was Thanks for watch and comment, cheers mates 👍

Hi Pals, I recently tested a new product for me, specifically artificial snow, and I liked the finish, so I made new pictures with a SLR camera for clarity, I hope you like them, cheers mates Some shots on detail.... O L D S H O T S.......... Hi folks, here my kit completed, i like share with everyone. Cheers Added link to assembly post http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234993366-m-24-chaffee-135-italeri/ Thx for watch and comment, cheers