Vickers Valentine x 3 and a bit***FINISHED***

[PeterB]

My next entry will be this.

Like @Mjwomack I can't think of a collective name for a group of Valentines and Dick Taylor has already used "Into the Vally" on his Mushroom Publications book which I will no doubt be referring to from time to time. Anywsay, as well as the 3 above, just before I became besotted with GB in June 2019 I was in the middle of refurbishing some existing tank kits and building some new ones - all of which went on hold! I thought this would be a  good time to finish off my Fujimi Valentine Mk II though of course it is injection plastic so cannot be an official entry, hence the 3 and a bit!.

 

Here it is stripped down and ready for painting.

and here is the real thing in the Tank Museum in obligatory Deep Bronze Green paint the used back then. The Census number makes it a Vickers built Mk II.

More once this GB starts, but for completeness I should say that the Milicasts kits cover a range of different Marks, the one on the left with 2 turrets can be built as a Mk II, Mk III and Mk V, the one in the middle is a Mk VIII (which incidentally was cancelled but more on that later) and the one on the right a Mk X or Mk XI depending on which gun I fit.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited March 16, 2021 by PeterB

[trickyrich]

gosh Pete you are doing things in 3's this time, and more wee tanks!

 

Again they do look nicely moulded.

 

Now if we had some wee panzers to appose them?

 

Good luck with these ones as well.

[PeterB]

As my first build is progressing I have now made a start on this one by cutting off the moulding blocks, cleaning the parts up and degreasing them.

The Valentine was in theory built in 11 different marks. The Mk I had a 2 man 40mm 2pdr equipped turret with a coax Besa mg, a single headlight, tracks that proved to be rather weak, and it was powered by an AEC petrol engine. The Mk II like my Fujimi kit had 2 headlights, improved tracks and an AEC diesel engine, whilst the otherwise identical Mk IV had a slightly more powerful GMC Detroit Diesel. The Mk 3 was a Mk II with and enlarged 3 man turret and that is the one at the left of the above pic though it needs an extra headlight adding - the Mk V was a Mk III with a GMC diesel. The Mk VI and VII were Canadian builds of the Mk IV with GMC diesels and in some cases were partially welded instead of being rivetted. The Mk VIII in the middle was going to be a Mk III with a 6pdr 57mm gun, no coaxial mg and a 2 man crew again and my old "British and American Tanks" book by Chamberlain and Ellis implies it was built, but later books say the order was cancelled in favour of virtually identical Mk IX - both Milicast and I were fooled it seems! The Mk X was modifed so that it carried a coax mg as well, and the MkXI had a British 75mm gun instead of the 6 pdr - that's the one on the right.

 

This might be a good time to discuss the relationship between turret size and the size of a tank crew. In simplistic terms a tank needs a driver, gunner, loader and commander, and those mounting a bow gun need somebody to operate that as well, often called a co-driver in British Tanks. After the start of WWII tanks were increasingly fitted with at least one and sometime two radio sets – a short range one for communicating with other tanks in the group and a longer ranged one for communicating with HQ if you were a troop leader - the number 19 set for example did both jobs and also provided an intercom. Somebody had to operate them and remember these were not modern solid state radios, they had valves and needed frequent adjusting. In many cases one of the other crew had to double up and work the radio which was not ideal. I should perhaps also mention that for whatever reason, British tank designers built their hulls as a braced box section with the track units then fixed on the side whereas designers in other countries such as Germany "sponsoned out" the hull over the tracks and thus gave themselves room for a much wider turret ring and therefore turret. Also, the War Office insisted tanks should be carried by rail whenever possible and the restrictive British loading gauge was another consideration - if only we had adopted Brunel's 7' 1/4" Broad Gauge instead of the "standard 4' 8.5" gauge" things could have been very different both for tank designers and railway travellers!

 

In any case, in the Valentine the maximum ring diameter was apparently 51", and therefore, like the turret ring of most wartime British tanks it was relatively narrow. By the time it had the gun fitted in (more on that next time), and allowing room for the recoil, the best it could manage was 3 turret crew and often it was only 2, which in the latter case meant that the commander had to also load the gun and work the radio when in combat – bad enough at the best of times but even worse if he also had to keep an eye on a troop of tanks and give them orders. In fact it has been suggested that one of the reasons the French tanks did relativity badly in 1940 was that they had at best 2 man turrets, and in some cases just the commander with his own small anti tank gun to both load and fire. Mind you, the Russian T-34/76 also had a 2 man turret initially, though they often did not have a radio fitted.

 

Next time I will explain the genesis of the Valentine Infantry Tank Mk III, but now I will get on with painting them - I will build the "Mk VIII" as a Mk IX I think.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited March 27, 2021 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Well, this certainly is a fast moving GB - go and make yourself a cup of tea and your thread goes back a page! Anyway the Valetines are just about built with only a few extras to add and the base colour is on.

The first Mk II arrived in the desert in mid 1941 at which time the Caunter paint scheme was in use, but although some were painted in this, it seems unlikely that they all were, and by the time the Mk III arrived in mid 1942 the official base colour was light stone so that is how I have painted the one on the left, though both it and the MkIX will have a single  disruptive colour overpainted on them. The Mk IX arrived in late 1942 by which time the base colour was "Desert Pink" and the Mk IX was too late for the desert and only used in Europe so it is in SCC15 British Olive Drab.

 

So here is the background story - I will go into individual model details later.

The engineering firm of Vickers - Armstrong made many of the tanks used by the British Army between the wars, including the Vickers Medium Mk I and Mk II and various light tanks. In the mid 1930's they were awarded contracts to build the A9 and A10 Cruisers and the A11 Infantry Tank Mk I and when Vulcan Foundry won the contract for the A12 Infantry tank Mk II commonly called the Matilda, Vickers were encouraged to build it under licence, but instead decided to develop a tank of their own loosely based on the A9. As it was a private venture it did not have an official “A” number, but when it was accepted in July 1939 with war looming, it became the Infantry Tank Mk III. Here is a pic showing the first 3 Infantry tanks for comparison

Milicast A11 Infantry Tank Mk I on the left, A12 Mk I Infantry Tank Mk II in the centre, both in BEF colours, and my old Fujimi Valentine Mk II on the right. As Dick Taylor says in one of his books on British tank colours and markings, it is noticeable how the Khaki Green G3 base colour on the first 2 looks quite a light colour when contrasted with the Deep Bronze Green disruptive paint, and yet when the lighter version of Bronze green was used as the disruptive colour on the Cruiser Tanks the G3 looks a lot darker!

 

There has been some speculation on how it came to be named Valentine with some suggesting it was because Vickers submitted their proposal to the War Office just before Valentine's Day 1938 whilst others say in was named in honour of their designer of many of their pre war tanks – Sir John Valentine Carden who had died in a plane crash in 1935. A third suggestion is that it comes from the initials of “Vickers Armstrong Ltd, Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne” but in one of his short “Tank Chats” videos David Fletcher dismisses all 3 as utter rubbish, and both he and Dick Taylor say it was the code name used within the works when it was being developed – Vickers used names starting with a “V”. Take your pick! Including ones made in Canada a total of 11 different Marks were projected of which 10 were produced, mainly differing in engine, turret, armament and tracks with the hull remaining almost totally unchanged throughout. It seems to have been the most numerous British gun tank built during WWII with over 7300 being made, around 30% of all tanks produced in that period. It was also the basis of the Bishop SPG, Archer anti tank vehicle, the first of the Duplex Drive “DD” swimming tanks and a variety of engineering vehicles including bridgelayers. It was not perhaps the best of tanks but it was reliable and it was there in quantity when needed, which was not always the case with other British tanks! It gave excellent service but was rapidly outclassed. It remained in service partly because problems delayed its replacement the Churchill for quite some time, but once that had proved itself in the Italian campaign the Valentine was frankly obsolete.

 

More next time.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

 

 

Edited March 31, 2021 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Earlier I mentioned how the turret and therefore gun size on British tanks was restricted both by the railway loading gauge and they way they built them with the running gear "bolted on" an armoured box, and as I was building a Fujimi Valentine II I took this pic which shows the problem..

The M3 Stuart light tank in the background shows the US solution - build out over the running gear at the expense of extra height - the M3 and M4 Mediums were the same. The Germans on the other hand, once they started using the very low mounted torsion bar suspension, were able to build out over it without any great gain in height, which was much better! I am in the process of adding decs to most of the tanks I have built and will post pics before too long. Of course this pair are not in the GB but they do illustrate my point rather well.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited April 8, 2021 by PeterB

[PeterB]

This batch is now finished.

The "bit" in the title refers to the Fujimi 1/76 Valentine Mk II which I was going to refurbish, but in the end I broke out a new one from my stash, which I had bought many years ago with a view to converting it to either an A9 or A10, but then I discovered the Milicast models of those early cruisers. It is not eligible for the GB but I included it to show what the original "small" 2 man turret looked like for comparison. The Mk III and Mk V introduced the slightly larger turret that could take 3 crew and was used from then on . I will post them in the "view only" gallery shortly.

 

Nothing complicated build wise but I enjoyed it.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[Mjwomack]

You just keep popping them out aren't you! A veritable production line