Allied Tank Destroyers - 3 different takes***FINISHED***

[PeterB]

If I have time I hope to build these.

On the left the improvised British Archer with lots of bits, in the middle the US M-18 Hellcat and on the right the A 30 Challenger Tank which some will argue was not actually a tank destroyer but more on that later. As you may have guessed the Archer is from Milicast's Premiere range and could be quite a fiddle!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[trickyrich]

those are some nice wee resin tanks you have there.

 

the casting from the photos looks to be really nice, though I can imagine those bits for the Archer will be quite tiny and fragile no doubt!

 

Good luck with these wee tanks.

[PeterB]

Hi Rich,

 

Yes, the archer and also the Sexton SP 25pdr gun have a lot of very thin and small details, some of which are going to be a slight problem I suspect, but I have enough plastic card, rod and tube, together with brass tube to hopefully manage. One of the biggest problems with these models is the gun barrels. The 2pdr ones are very thin and can be a pain to get off the moulding blocks intact, and like all thin resin are prone to bending so I have invested in a load of Aber metal barrels for many of the kits. With the longer guns Milicast have opted for an interesting solution by casting the resin on a metal rod which should be better. Milicast have now started selling a few metal barrels as well but when I first started buying their models I bought quite a few barrels from the old White Ensign, When they went under I sourced them direct from the manufacturer in Eastern Europe and now have a box full of them including 3 x17pdr and at least 1 US 76mm as in the Hellcat. I even have some nice brass shell cases to add to them if I want some extra detail, not to mention a fair bit of resin "stowage" and some crew figures for the odd one or two that come with the hatches moulded open, such as the A 30.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[PeterB]

I have cleaned up the mouldings and decided to make a start. I will take a different approach to my other threads by building these one at a time, starting with the A30 Challenger which has the least number of parts - I previously said 3 but it is actually 4 - hull, turret, gun and one hatch cover over the driver!

Milicast normally either mould their hatches closed or provide you with seperate "lids" so you can decide if you want them open or not. However in a few cases as above they mould them open, no doubt so you can fit figures, To be honest I am not a great fan of figures at this scale, though that may be due to the fact that I am rubbish at painting them, but as it would be quite a fiddle to cut off the hatches and glue them shut - probably involving making replacements for some of them, I will have a go with some crew figures I have. One other problem with moulding them open is that the forward cover on the right hand hatch had broken off and gone missing so I have replaced that, and also replaced a section of the "splash ring" in front of the turret which had been damaged. The kit included a 17pdr barrel made from resin moulded over a metal rod to stop it bending and was not bad, but as I had bought some replacements years ago I thought I would use one as they are rather nice - turned aluminium barrel with a brass muzzle brake from RB Models in Poland.

 

So, before I start on the history of the A30, I said in my intro that although I had named the thread "Tank Destroyers" the Challenger was technically a tank - according to one school of thought that is because it has a co-axial Browning 30cal mg in the turret! Tank destroyers are in theory only meant to hunt and kill tanks, though in reallity the American M10 was often used to provide artillery support for the infantry. Tanks on the other hand are more "general purpose" and indeed some doctrines said that they should only fight other tanks when there was no alternative. Instead they were improved versions of the WWI  "armoured pillboxes" on tracks that could use HE shells and machine guns to break through enemy defences. Whatever - the Challenger was built for one purpose - to mount the 76.2mm OQF 17pdr gun and help the less well armed Cromwell tank units fight off German Panthers and Tigers - it was known as a "hole puncher"! In some narratives the 17pdr has almost achieved legendary status but whilst it was better than almost any other allied tank gun of the time in terms of armour penetration, that was to some extent due to the type of ammunition used, but that is a complicated story and I won't go into it here. It was it seems not quite as accurate as some other guns, though that may again be to do with the ammunition to some extent, it had a slower rate of fire than the US equivalent 76mm M1 family of guns, and the muzzle blast could sometimes cause so much dust and debris to be flung up that sighting the next round had to be delayed until it cleared. Nonetheless it could and did penetrate the armour on most enemy tanks reliably at up to 1000 yards range whilst the standard M4 Sherman with a 75mm gun had to get a lot closer at greater risk of being knocked out in the process. Comparing the penetration capability of guns is a bit of a minefield as different techniques were used but Chamberlain and Ellis quote the following figures from British tests - all with the best type of ammunitions (which was not always available) and at an impact angle of 30^o and a range of 500ft. 40mm 2pdr 57.5mm, 57mm 6pdr 83mm, British 75mm 68mm, US 75mmM3 70mm, 76.2mm 17pdr 186mm, shorter barreled "77mm" used in the Comet 109mm but that may not be with the more effective APDS (Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot) ammo, in which case the comparable figure for the long 17pdr is only 120mm. Unfortunately their figures for the US 76mm are for ranges of 1000yards where the so called "silver bullet" HVAP could manage 133mm though they were in short supply and with the normal AP shell the figure was only 88mm. Only the US 90mm gun in the M36 Tank Destroyer and a handfull of M26 Pershings could actually do better than the 17pdr.

 

So, next time a short history of the development and use of the A30, but in the meantime I will get a coat of SCC15 British Olive Drab paint on.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

Edited March 28, 2021 by PeterB

[Ray S]

Peter, I am continually amazed at the amount of knowledge you have for your build subjects, whatever 'genre' they are in. I am continually learning for your threads, thanks for giving the information.

 

Cheers,

 

Ray

[PeterB]

Thanks Ray,

 

There are not perhaps quite as many books/magazines/TV programmes/websites available on Tanks as there are on planes but there are still quite a lot. many of which I have read/seen over the years. Of course, as with planes some of the info is now looking a bit dubious as time goes by and some of it is downright wrong - in my Valentine build thread I mentioned the Mk VIII which it now seems was never actually built for example and the supposedly 1/76 drawings in my old book by Chamberlain and Ellis seem in some cases to be 1/72 or even bigger, but I guess that is par for the course! I am glad you appreciate some of my details - I suspect many find them boring, but there we are. As I said before, the builds are usually quick so I thought the background might add a little interest - probably overdoing it as usual. Incidentally, my son has a mild form of Autism called Asperger's Syndrome - does not affect him greatly but when he is interested in subject he is a walking encyclopedia on it, anything else and his knowledge is very limited. I sometimes wonder if he got it from me for as it says on my profile on BM I am a rather obsessed Modeller!😁

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited March 28, 2021 by PeterB

[PeterB]

So, here is the Challenger ready for decs and a no doubt crude attempt at adding a crew. Note the light blue countershading under the end of the long barrel which was intended to confuse the enemy who soon relaised that the 17pdr was dangerous and prioritised tanks with long guns - some crews went further and fitted a replica muzzle brake made from tin cans at the point where the normal 75mm gun would have ended!

I thought I had bought at least one set of crew in the late war "Pixie suits" ie overalls but it seems not to be the case. As you can see there are optional legs for one figure and poseable arms for another.

 

As war approached it was realised the enemy would also have tanks in some numbers so thoughts turned to how to deal with them, and the Medium became the Cruiser armed with the effective 40mm 2 pdr anti tank gun, but like the later 6pdr this had no real HE capability, unlike the 75mm gun on both the US M3 and M4 Mediums. The Brits then made an enlarged 75mm gun with good HE capability but the armour penetration was if anything worse than the 6pdr which was being outclassed by the thicker armour and heavier guns of the German Panzer IV with the long 75mm gun, the Panther and Tiger. They had developed a much superior gun known as the 76.2 mm 17pdr but found that the existing British tanks were too small to take a turret big enough to mount it (see my Valentine build for an explanation) so a race began to find a solution. 

 

As an interim solution a 17pdr was fitted in an open mount on top of surplus Valentine tank chassis. This had the advantage of being quick to produce and the Archer as it was named also had quite a low profile, but the length of the gun meant it had to be mounted with limited traverse and pointing to the rear! It actually worked quite well in an ambush situation and also meant that it could withdraw quite quickly when spotted as it was already pointing in the right direction, but it was far from ideal. So efforts were made to scale up the Cromwell cruiser tank to take a turret mounted gun. This was a long drawn out business and the Challenger as it was named was a big clumsy thing with a very tall turret to allow the long breech of the 17pdr full elevation and depression, and also to make room for a second loader. Also, due it seems to an oversight it was not waterproofed for wading ashore from landing craft so it missed D-Day but fortunately it had been found that by turning the gun on its side and cutting a hole in the back of the turret to allow for the recoil, it was possible to mount the 17pdr in the Sherman as the Firefly, As a consequence each troop of tanks in Europe usually had at least one Firefly or Challenger to strengthen their normal Sherman or Cromwell tanks, with the number rising as time went on. Later of course a shortened version of the gun christened the 77mm was fitted into the Comet, a somewhat less drastically modified Cromwell, and the gun also found its way into US supplied M 10 tank destroyers which were probably called Achilles – there is some debate as to when the name actually came into use I believe.

 

As for the Challenger itself the British railway loading gauge limit meant that the hull of the Cromwell could not be widened overall but the centre section was widened by carrying it over the suspension, and to gain a few more inches the turret was not supported on the usual ring of roller bearings but on a central pillar with a ball joint – not ideal but it seemed to work though a manually operated jack was provided to raise it an inch or two if it jammed! The extra weight resulted in the hull being extended and an extra pair of road wheels fitted – this longer hull resulted in it being less easy to turn but the RR Meteor engine, a modified and non–supercharged Merlin, had plenty of power so it was nearly as fast as a Cromwell and probably faster than a Sherman Firefly. However to reduce weight the armour thickness was reduced, particularly on the turret and this led to complaints so extra plates were fitted later. The other complaint was about the height as it was a foot taller than the Cromwell but in fact it was still 8” lower than the Firefly. After the armour was increased it gained in popularity somewhat apparently, but perhaps the fact that the Army seemed to forget it when naming the replacement for the Chieftain the Challenger I not Challenger II indicates their opinion of this tank! 200 were built but only 2 survive, one in a museum in Holland and the other was in a museum on the Isle of Wight but that closed and it is now in the Tank Museum undergoing restoration. As a result I do not have a photo!

 

At the start of this GB I said I though most of you would find my entries boring, partly because that had very few parts, and partly because I was building tanks in what is essentially the "aircraft" section of the forum. I should perhaps have entered this lot in the armour section but I fancied a break from planes and this GB gave me the incentive to get some of the 20 plus sitting in a bag actually finished. Anyway, this was the last of the really easy builds I was originally entering as the M18 Hellcat is a bit more complicated, whilst the Archer is a real kit with around 80 parts if you include the spent shell cases!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited March 31, 2021 by PeterB

[PeterB]

I have made a start on the Archer though so far it has just been cleaning up.

This model started life as one of Milicast's “Premiere Range” with  over 80 parts, but has since been recast for their simplified “Battlefield” series, which reduces the number of parts  to around 60 including shell cases and makes it easier to a point. However it also causes problems in this case. In the original version the hull sides were separate so you would have had a bit of “wriggle room” when fitting the front plate I guess. As it is the plate is slightly narrow but that may be wear on either the mould or the master. More importantly the two “ammo boxes” mounted at the front on either side of the driver project much too far forward and you can see where I have had to file and cut them back as is shows up as a darker grey colour. Several of the smaller parts such as the gear and steering levers seem to have either been lost along the way or are too flimsy to survive being cut off the block but I can replace them with plastic rod, but surprisingly the “sten” gun for the crew has been moulded and is intact! The slatted driver's seat back is also there but the odds on me getting it off the block intact are poor. There are quite a few small parts I have yet to identify as the instructions are frankly not very good as they are a rather faint photocopy Tom kindly sent me – the Battlefield Series do not come with instructions! In spite of that I have some pretty decent reference plans so with a bit of plastic rod /card and some filler I should be able to improvise, but it will certainly not be an exact replica! The long gun barrel has a metal insert so is straight but then the breech is bent slightly, but I should be able to fix that with the help of some hot water. The resin "cartridge cases" are a bit naff but I have a set of turned metal ones (together with a few actual shells to fit in them). Unfortunately the holes in the stowage racks are undersize and too close together but I have managed to drill a few out and will add the "brass" cases to liven it up a bit!

 

There are one or two Archer kits in 1/35 but this is the only one in 1/76 except for the somewhat simplified one from Hobby Den in Ireland I believe, which I guess is intended for wargaming? The same people also do a simplified Conqueror which tempts me somewhat as it is about the only British tank I am missing (could have got a "yellow" resin one in the Tank Museum shop 35 years ago but can't remember who made it - possibly the predecesssor to Milicast - another case of he who hestiates misses out), though I might bite the bullet and pay twice as much for the one from OKB Grigarov one day (if I win the Lottery)!😁

 

More as and when.

 

Pete

 

 

[PeterB]

Well, I have finished my Challenger and it just needs a final coat of flat varnish. It is in the markings of 2nd Northants Yeomanry who were operating their Cromwell Cruisers in a recce role for 11th Armoured division from D-Day onwards. Once the Challengers arrived a few days later, delayed as they could not wade ashore as mentioned earlier, they were given one to each troop to combat German tanks such as the Panther and Tiger. Unfortunately losses in the British forces meant that they were disbanded in August 1944 with their men and machines being distributed to other units to bring them back up to strength.

I am never happy with painting figures and the flesh colour is always a problem. I mix my own as the Humbrol colour is not right to my mind, but the question is just how tanned these “tankies” would have been? I know that after 3 years in India and Burma, together with a long journey there and back on a troopship my late father was really brown and it took many years for it to fade. I guess men who had served in the desert would be the same, but this lot had spent quite a bit of time as a training regiment in the UK before switching to the armoured recce role in 1943 and from then on the spent their time in barracks or tents when not in their metal boxes on tracks, and the weather in autumn 1944 was notably bad, so I am guessing most of them would have been “palefaces”!

 

I have made some progress on the Archer. I fitted replacement gear and steering levers and actually managed to get the driver's seat back off intact. I have also glued on the loaders seats, but according to my plans they had curved backrests. As I could not find any in the kit parts I knocked some up from thin plastic card which I taped around the handle of a thin paint brush, poured almost boiling water over to bend them followed by cold water to set them in place. After trimming they look about right. I will do the same again with the "bicycle" type gunner's seat once I have worked out exactly where it goes

A few years back I noticed that the people I bought most of my metal replacement gun barrels from - RB Models in Poland - also did packs of turned metal shell cartridge cases together with some shells themselves for a small number of gun calibres including the 17 pdr. As you can see in the pic they include 3 each of 3 different shell types (they are the bits in a silver coloured metal) - I am guessing that the longer ones are normal AP and perhaps HE rounds but the short ones are APDS complete with the drive bands on the sabot  or "pot". I have no idea how they make them but the detail is incredible given how small they are - less than 2 mm long! Very useful for a diorama or just scattering around guns or SP mountings such as the Archer or Hellcat though painting the various coloured bands on the shells would be a nightmare. Pity I cannot put more in but the shell rack holes are too close together so I could only drill out a small number without wrecking the mouldings

 

So with the front end detailed I can now fit the front plate and start on the gun mounting itself.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

Edited April 20, 2021 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Right, this is where the guesswork starts! Like all tank guns the barrel and breech recoil backwards on firing – in the case of the 17pdr it moves quite a long way which is why a hole had to be cut in the rear of the Sherman Firefly turret to move the radio backwards into an extension box out of the way. To prevent the gunner and loader being injured hinged guards were fitted on either side, and it seems that there was also a box under the breech to collect spent cartridges and a “deflector” at the end of it to stop them flying backwards. All of these are provided by Milicast but the pictures are so vague I cannot be sure if I have mounted them correctly! Lowering the shields and deflector before loading, then putting them back before firing may explain in part why the rate of fire was only half that of the similarly sized American 76mm M1 gun. Speaking of recoil, the driver in the Archer sat in the same position in the middle of the hull as in the Valentine which placed him directly in line with the breech when it was firing straight backwards, and apparently it only stopped a few inches short of his head. In theory, when firing from ambush it was normal for the driver to stay in his seat with the engine running so that they could get off a couple of quick shots then move – I bet he sat leaning as far forwards as he could!

 

Anyway here is the gun breech and also the mount, to which I have added the elevation hand wheel and the gunner's seat and back, but again I have guessed the position somewhat. I have extended the mounting a bit as it looks like there will be a gap between it and the shield as moulded – might have to do a bit more work on that. Once all this is in place I have numerous smaller parts to add – headlights, driver's visor, cable reel, fishtail exhaust pipe and smoke generators to name a few.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

[PeterB]

Well that was fun. The carpet monster had its traditional offerings but I managed to recover everything but one headlight for which I made a rough replacement, and all the small bits are on I think! I left them unpainted so you can see what was involved, but will now do the final touching up and it should be ready for decals – did not take as long as I thought it would!

 

 

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[PeterB]

And here it is painted up. The “tube” to the left of the driver was for the optical range finder which I have fitted on top of the gun shield. Next to it is a spare radio aerial , and on the other side of the driver is a 2” mortar mounted externally, together with a cable reel – it is after all a Royal Artillery vehicle and they did use field telephones at times! The other vehicle is Milicast's Anglo/Canadian Sexton SPG which I built at the same time.

Considering it was only a “stop gap improvisation” the Archer actually worked pretty well, being the combination of a well tried and reliable chassis with a powerful gun. It was a fair bit slower that the US M10, M18 and M36 Gun Motor Carriages (GMC) but had a much lower profile so was easier to conceal and harder to hit. 665 were built and it equipped the British Army from October 1944 onwards, and was not retired until several years after WWII ended. The Egyptians acquired 200 and used them against the Israelis in 1956. The only fixed armament was the 17 pdr but it did also have a Bren gun as standard and the crew had their own personal weapons, Sten guns I suppose. It also was supposed to have a 2” mortar mounted on the right of the driver which could be used for smoke I guess but was intended to fire parachute flares for night actions – apparently it was not always fitted and rarely used. In common with other late model tanks it had a couple of smoke generators at the back – I had assumed they were fixed and in the engine compartment with outlets on the hull, but apparently they were self contained units like smoke floats used by the RN and RAF, which could actually be dropped off once making smoke, and would continue to lay a screen as the vehicle made its escape! It had a crew of 4 – commander, gunner, loader and driver. I have marked it up as a machine of 102 Anti Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery when it was part of the 15th (Scottish) Division in Germany in February 1945, based on an illustration in the Osprey book on the Valentine tank. They say that it was the first gun of L Troop, which was the SP section, most of the other units using towed 6pdr and 17pdr, and that following the assualt on the town of Goch in the Rhineland on February 8th by XXX Corps, the Archers moved forwards into defensive positions to deal with any German counterattack.

 

That just leaves the M 18 Hellcat which I have made a start on.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited April 22, 2021 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Oh, what the heck! I started off this GB intending to take a short break as after 1 year of lockdown I have built a lot of planes and felt like a change. The problem is I intended to only build 9 tanks at the most, and am currently finishing my 15th "official" entry, not counting the 3 others I have done in the background and 2 more pending. I am enjoying it so much that I am in danger of not completing the 2 planes I started in the Gulf GB which ends in just over 2 weeks, so I have put my foot down and will finish the tanks pretty quickly now. I did try pausing the tanks and even managed to progress the planes a bit, but then I started on the tanks again. Unfortunately my old stocks of paint White Ensign Colourcoats look to be going off so I am trying to get everything finished before they die of old age - well at least that is my excuse!

 

So here is the Hellcat with a splash of paint on, together with the Milicast M4A3E2 "Jumbo" assault tank which I am building in parallel (not for this GB).

This is another model with hatches moulded open, in this case the hull ones, but it is a bit odd as the hull block is hollow so you could see right through until I stuffed in some Milliput. The only other part added to the hull is a towing hook, but the turret was a bit more fiddly. The gun breech together with two side shields/rails  which I glued on was a real pain to get in place, and then I added the main 76.2 mm barrel (I used a metal replacement) and the skate ring for the 50cal mg. Miliput provide a highly detailed mg - seperate mount, breech, ammo box, barrel and even a tiny handle to glue on the barrel which was used when replacing it after a set number of rounds as they heated up and wore out. Unfortunately the last 2 parts are so fragile that Milicast actually suggest replacing them with the turned brass barrel and etched handles they provide at extra cost - I will be using something from the spares box!

 

So, I will start my final lecture of this GB.

If you have read my rambling rants on British tank development between the wars in my early cruiser thread you probably think it was a bit of a shambles, but if anything it was even worse in the US, though for pretty much the same reasons – lack of money and lack of incentive as nobody thought there would be another war so soon! At least the Brits started to get their act together in the mid 1930's, but with their avowed intent to stay neutral the US were slow to react and by 1940 the best tanks they had were the M2 Light Tank used by the cavalry and the progenitor of the M3 Stuart, and a slightly heavier M2 Medium Tank – both with the same turret mounted 37mm gun.

Following the fall of France in 1940 the US Army realised that in the event that they did get involved in the war, they needed a way to stop German tanks. One school of thought wanted an improved tank with heavy armour and a bigger gun. Another led by Gen Lesley McNair, Senior Commander Army Ground Forces and an ex artilleryman thought it was ridiculous to use an expensive tank to destroy enemy tanks when a cheap anti tank gun could do it just as well in his opinion, and he had a major influence on the resulting shambles. In the meantime a separate Tank Destroyer Command was set up and although concentrating mainly on towed guns they also looked at self propelled mounts. The first result was a couple of compromise “tank destroyers” one mounting a 37mm gun on a truck and another a copy of the old French 75mm gun on a half track – neither were a success! The Tank Destroyer Command felt that the ideal solution was a vehicle with thinner armour than a tank and therefore faster and the first result was the GMC (Gun Motor Carriage) M10 which used the chassis of the M3/M4 Medium tank with thin sloped body armour and an open turret mounting a 3” M1918 AA gun. This was not entirely successful as the gun was not really powerful enough so it was later replaced by the M36 with a 90mm gun, though as mentioned earlier the Brits fitted their 17pdr to the M10 with rather better results. The other outcome was the M18 Hellcat which was one of the fastest AFV's produced, but the thin armour and relatively weak 76mm gun still limited its usefulness, and all 3 tank destroyers were open topped leading to casualties from shell splinters and mortars, and potential death traps in street fighting.

 

The TD's did some good work, though mainly as SP artillery in Italy, the towed guns proved difficult to transport and were only much use in defensive emplacements, and the bulk of the enemy tanks destroyed were killed by masses of cheap but vulnerable Shermans which had often to close to very short range to have any effect. The Brits did offer the US some 17pdr Fireflies but the offer was refused (like the offer of "Hobart's Funnies" for D-Day, except for DD Shermans) The Americans did look at heavier tanks and spent a long time on the M6 which never entered service, before introducing the M26 in the last few months of the war in Europe. This led to the Pershing family, ancestors of the M47, M48 and M60 Patton family They also looked at “Super Heavies” the only one to enter service being the post war M103 which was similar in concept to the British Conqueror and the Russian T10.

 

More on the Hellcat itself next time.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

 

[PeterB]

Ok, not the best of photos but my Hellcat is just about done.

I have done it as one on the Anzio beaches shortly after the first landing, with black disruptive stripes. It needs a bit of stowage adding and a coat of matt varnish to complete it.

 

The Hellcat was, like Jackie Fisher's Battlecruisers,  a flawed design but looked good on paper due to its high speed. However the US 76mm gun, though a bit better than the 75mm just did not have the power to penetrate Panthers and Tigers, so its apparent success was due to the training and courage of the crews rather than the design itself. The later HVAP shell did even things up a bit but they were in very short supply so a crew would be lucky to have half a dozen of them when starting a mission, at least early on in the post D-Day war. The US concept of the Tank Destroyer was frankly wrong – the best way to kill a tank was with a better tank except perhaps in an ambush situation at relatively short range, or so it seems to me! Almost as soon as the M4 Sherman was accepted for production, designers began looking at ways of improving it – sloped/thicker armour and bigger guns were all tried as was improving the suspension, but all increased the weight thus making it slower, and more expensive to build, and at the time the “Armoured Force Command” were more than happy with the existing M4 as it was cheap and they could have lots of them. They even initially turned down the better 76mm gun as they did not see a need for it, and anyway it would complicate ammunition supplies. It was not until after D-Day when they encountered German tanks that they realised they had a major problem – tanks were indeed having to fight other tanks and fields littered with burning Shermans were evidence that the policies they adopted were wrong and cost a lot of lives!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited April 23, 2021 by PeterB

[Mjwomack]

On 4/22/2021 at 9:43 PM, PeterB said:

currently finishing my 15th "official" entry

I'm glad you can keep track of them, I gave up counting ages ago! I guessed the number of builds, as opposed to threads across the whole GB was over 100, and it comfortably is with your 15 in the mix.

 

On 4/22/2021 at 9:43 PM, PeterB said:

So, I will start my final lecture of this GB.

That's a shame, it'll be the end of my education!!

[PeterB]

Thanks for that Mj.

 Over the years I have bought 40 models from Milicast - can't really call them kits as most have less than a dozen pieces and the two light utility trucks that Tom threw in as a welcome gift with my first order are actually just one solid lump! The main work after cleaning them up is painting and putting on decs so it is not that interesting to watch. I finished building 19 of them before I became involved in my first GB and they went on hold - 10 finished completely and 9 waiting for finishing touches. By the time this GB ends they will all be done barring mishaps, so thanks for giving me back the motivation. All I have to do now is try to work out which of 4 different Panzer Grey paints I used on the 5 German ones as all are slightly different in shade!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[Graham Boak]

The battlefield series are pretty simple, but this is much less true of the Premiere range.  The tanks may still come with assembled track units, but there's more than enough modelling on the trucks to keep anyone happy.  I'm still unable to pluck up the courage to face the D7 'dozer or the 3in AA gun. 

[PeterB]

True enough Graham.

Even after simplification when transferred to the Battlefield series, the Hellcat and the Sexton I built on the side both had a dozen or so pieces, and the Archer had about 30, but some of the softskins clearly have a fair bit more - if you manage to use them all. The original parts list for the Archer had around 80!

 

Pete

Edited April 24, 2021 by PeterB

[PeterB]

This lot are now finished and as both the Archer and Hellcat were a bit more like a conventional kit and took a fair bit of work I think I will post them in the "normal" gallery for a change!

 

Ok, I realise that in this part of the Forum most people are mainly building planes so my tanks were probably not that interesting to many of you, particularly as they did not involve much actual construction so I tried to fill in with “lectures” – sorry about that! I have ended up building 15 Milicast resin tanks, armoured cars and tank destroyers that I have had sitting around for quite a few years, and in parallel I have built another 5 of their resin models together with a couple of plastic injection ones, and also managed to finish refurbishing and repainting quite a few others! It has been a nice break from my normal entries on this forum and I have enjoyed it a lot, so thanks for @Mjwomack for creating a type of GB that gave me the incentive to get off my backside and get them done. If I had done this on the military vehicle section of the Forum, I suspect it would have either been limited to a particular type of tank, say Valentines, or a particular period/battle. I believe I bought 40 Milicast models over the years and before this GB I had assembled half with around 9 still awaiting final painting and decs. Well I have now built the rest , and finished off 4 of the earlier ones, which just leaves 5 early German tanks to put decs on. Not bad for just over 5 weeks and I at least thoroughly enjoyed it!

 

For the record one final pic of some Milicast kits I either built or finished off in parallel with this GB –

On the left are my Grants and Sherman II which I built over 2 years ago but have now finished painting and putting decs on. In the middle are the Churchill Mk IV, Sexton Mk II SPG and Sherman M4A3E2 Jumbo “Assault Tank” - a heavily up-armoured Sherman for close in fighting in built up areas and against fortifications, and on the right a pair of Japanese tanks, the Type 89B Otsu “medium” used in China and the Philippines and the Type 95 Ha Go Light tank which was the most numerous Japanese tank used throughout the war. The absence of radio aerials is noteworthy as they were forced to communicate by the commander sticking his head out of the turret and using flags! I did not include the builds of the last 5 in the GB as I thought I had inflicted enough on you already! One more pair of military vehicles to build in the Africa GB and then back to planes. If I can find where I hid my CMR Sopwith Dolphin I might just enter that in this GB.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[Mjwomack]

Look at 'em all on parade! Glad this GBN has got them out of the depot and on manoeuvres

[ColonelKrypton]

20 hours ago, PeterB said:

so I tried to fill in with “lectures” – sorry about that!

 

No need to apologize; it is all good and all interesting.

 

I have found your builds and "lectures" to be most interesting. I used to build a lot of armour kits but British types were not my focus. Even so, perhaps my view point was already a bit biased.

 

Cheers, Graham