Takom Grant and Lee CDLs discontinued

[Kingsman]

I was looking for a Takom Grant CDL recently and not liking the prices I saw.  However I found them at Hannants on offer for £31.99 rather than £47.99.  Bargain!  I was almost tempted to a 2nd just for the turret for a Matilda CDL..............  Almost.

 

In conversation it emerged that both of these kits are now discontinued and that remaining stock is all there is for the foreseeable future.  Very slow sellers, the cast-hull Lee version in particular.  So if you have any desire for one, get it now while you can.

[John Tapsell]

With regards to using the Grant CDL turret for a Matilda - you can't do so without modifying the turret and backdating it. Matildas were fitted with Type A turrets, as were early M3s (they literally swapped the turrets onto the M3 hulls).

 

The Takom British M3 CDL is fitted with the later Type D turret (a re-manufactured and upgraded Type A turret). Matilda CDLs were out of service by the time the Type D turret was introduced but there may have been a few retained at the CDL School.

 

The Matilda CDL at Bovington carries a Type D turret so it's either a development/test vehicle or a post-war mash-up.

 

To do a Type A you'd need to reinstate the circular hatch in the turret side, remove the 'hooks' that protrude above the turret roof edges and remove the false gun barrel. There were a number of internal changes as well, but that's not really an issue unless you are including the interior.

[Kingsman]

I decided against the idea, largely because I'd only just listed my Matilda on eBay.  And I knew there were turret differences, although not what they were in detail.

 

Am I correct in believing that the Churchill CDLs had the Type D turret too?

 

As for the Grant model, I'm undecided whether to do a photographed one with M3 bogies as per kit and T48 tracks or whether to do another photographed one with M4 bogies and T41 track.  The kit has link and length T41s but I prefer the Miniart version.  Am I correct in believing that those with M4 bogies were built on the refurbished Lee hulls supplied by the US, and that there will therefore be other minor differences?  Or did we replace some bogies?

[John Tapsell]

Ummm - sort of...
 

The Churchills of 152 RAC used the Type B turret, sometimes referred to as the '85mm turret'. It was identical to the Type A in most (all?) other respects except for the thickness of the casting (Type A turrets had 65mm walls). Thus it was a heavier turret and wasn't suitable for the Matilda or M3.

 

A decision was taken in late 1943 to focus only on M3 CDLs and withdraw the Churchill CDLs. However, for reasons I still haven't been able to bottom out, they still decided to prioritise the upgrade of the Type B turrets over the Type A turrets, causing delays in the availability of the upgraded M3 CDLs for issue to 1st Tank Brigade prior to D-Day. The upgraded Type B was never referred to as a Type D in any records I've studied but had all the same upgrades except for the dummy gun.

 

The 250 M3s ordered from the USA specifically for the CDL programme all went through the same rebuild programme that US Army vehicles did before they were shipped to the UK, so they had the M4 bogies. I don't believe any British vehicles were rebuilt (not seen anything in the records to suggest they were). The British hulls were a mix of Grant and Lee types (sourced from UK training Regts, ex-Canadian armoured Regts and 8th Army stocks in North Africa).