M5A1 at Saipan

[Matt B]

I’ve been looking forward to this group build.  My entry will be AFV Club’s 1/35 M5A1 and I will be doing it as a 4th Marine tank at Kwajalein, more specifically, during the battle for Roi-Namur.  
 

Not pictured are some Tiger Model Designs goodies I have to dig out of somewhere.  A combination of the kit decals and Star Decals will be used to depict “Hothead” from Company B, 4th Marine Tank Battalion.

 

During the Battle For Kwajalein, the heaviest action took place on the islands of Roi-Namur (connected by a causeway).  Because they figured to be the most heavily defended in the atoll, the task of clearing them went to the Marines.  Roi was home to a large airfield while Namur had the support buildings.  Intelligence figured the airfield would be more heavily defended, so M4A2 Shermans were sent ashore there while the M5A1 Stuarts, which were quickly falling out of favor with the USMC, went ashore at Namur for what figured to be little more than mop up duty.  Unfortunately the opposite happened.  The Shermans raced across Roi with very little resistance while the main fighting greeted the troops who went ashore at Namur.  The four Company B tanks (Hothead, Hunter, Hornet and Heater) did their best to help, but some never made it off the beach after falling into shell holes.  Furthermore, during the first day of fighting, they lost their commanding officer.  Capt James Denig in Hunter was advancing across the island when his tank got caught up on a tree stump.  Half a dozen Japanese soldiers then used this opportunity to swarm the small tank.  A nearby marine left cover and emptied his BAR at the soldiers, cutting down five in one blow, but in the short time it took to reload, the sixth enemy soldier was able to climb on top of the tank and drop a grenade in the signal port.  The marines rushed to the aid of the crewmen, but the grenade fatally wounded Denig and the driver.  Roi-Namur was secured the next day but it had come at a cost and further proved to the Marines that the Stuart was no longer a front line vehicle….by the summer of 1944, all Stuarts in their inventory had been replaced with M4A2s.

 

Capt Denig’s burnt out Stuart.

 

Edited November 5 by Matt B

[Stef N.]

A very interesting project. All the best.👍

[modelling minion]

Great to see an M5 represented Matt and also great to see the USMC in the GB too, it helps to show how the Stuart saw action in every theatre of WWII.

[Bullbasket]

I built this kit some years ago, and I think that you will find it an interesting build.

 

John.

[modelling minion]

10 minutes ago, Bullbasket said:

I think that you will find it an interesting build.

In a good way?

[Bullbasket]

47 minutes ago, modelling minion said:

In a good way?

Yes, sorry, I should have made that a bit clearer. It's a good kit, with plenty of detail, especially in the turret. If I was to level any criticism at it, then it would be the plastic that it's moulded from. It's quite soft.

 

John.

[Matt B]

5 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

I built this kit some years ago, and I think that you will find it an interesting build.

 

John.

I think I’ll like it too.  Looks to be plenty of details and all reviews I’ve read have seemed positive.  
 

I will have to scratch build the lower part of the wading trunk, but I don’t think that should be too difficult to do with some styrene.  Using photos of the actual tanks as well as a photo of a Stuart wading trunk Tank Workshop offered back in the day, I feel like I know all the details I need to include and it doesn’t look like a hard scratch build. 

Edited September 7 by Matt B

[PlaStix]

Hi Matt. It's great to have you taking part in this GB with what is an excellent choice of kit. Sounds like a great idea for a project too. I'm looking forward to following your progress.

Kind regards,

Stix

[PlaStix]

Hi Matt. I hope you are well. I'm just checking if you have had chance to make any progress with your build?

Kind regards,

Stix

[Matt B]

5 hours ago, PlaStix said:

Hi Matt. I hope you are well. I'm just checking if you have had chance to make any progress with your build?

Kind regards,

Stix

Yup, been busy with other things lately but did finally manage to get most of the lower and upper hulls assembled yesterday.  I will try to post some photos tonight.

[PlaStix]

Great you've got something started Matt. Looking forward to seeing some photos. 

Kind regards, 

Stix

[Matt B]

Bench needs some serious cleaning before I pull out the DSLR, so phone pics will have to do for now.  Main hull components are assembled.  Definitely not Tamiya level fit but still decent for the most part and all of the gaps (some of my own doing) and such are manageable.  Still lots of detail parts to add, but I wanted to get the main shell assembled so I can start working on the wading trunk.   I also started assembling the turret (just the sides, the top isn’t glued down).

 

 

[PlaStix]

Hi Matt. Good to see the photos of your progress so far! And I reckon it's looking very good too!

Kind regards,

Stix

[modelling minion]

Excellent progress Matt, she looks great. I certainly can't see any gaps so you must have done a superb job on dealing with them.

[Matt B]

58 minutes ago, modelling minion said:

Excellent progress Matt, she looks great. I certainly can't see any gaps so you must have done a superb job on dealing with them.

Selective photos!  None are really that bad but the main ones are on the underside where the sponsons meet the outer upper hull plates and on the other side of the front glacis plate where it meets the side hull.  For whatever reason I was having a hard time getting the outer hull piece to fit around the lower hull and I ended up sanding some spots I thought were the issue that weren't which resulted in some small gaps.  Nothing some perfect plastic putty cant take care of.

[Matt B]

Getting ready for a camping trip next week, so I will not get back to the bench until next weekend, but I found a better quality photo of Hothead that provides a number of details.

 

1.) I've read the Company B tanks did not contain much stowage and that appears to be case.  However, there is a bucket hanging off the left rear, a canvas tarp (or possibly part of the intake waterproofing) laying over the tools on the rear, and what appears to be a .30 cal tripod on the front right fender.  The latter is a detail not included in the AFV kit, but I have one in the spares since Tamiya's M8 Combat Patrol Set boxing included the .30 cal sprue from the M3 Late kit.

 

2.) Brush strokes in the white camouflage are clearly visible.  I've gathered that this was applied on the ship in order to break up the OD  on the sandy beaches of Kwajalein, so it appears it was hastily done with a paint brush or other method.  I have not found any photos showing the upper surfaces of these tanks, and I'm thinking the white was only applied to vertical surfaces, so thats what I plan to do.

 

3.) You can see splotches of darker colors on the hull, but I'm curious if this was actually paint since there's no brush strokes in them like the white.  I've read that crewmen sometimes rubbed fuel or grease into the paint to break up the monotony of the OD, so I'm wondering if thats what was done here.  The lines look too crisp for that though. Color profiles of the Namur Stuarts often show the 3rd color as brown, but I'm not sure about that.

 

4.)  The black sealant used on the wading trunk to seal the join between the lower potion and the upper stack can be seen smeared on the lower portion.  The upper portion was discarded as soon as the tanks hit the beach, the lower portion was kept in place.

 

5.)  Grousers are fitted to the tracks, but the racks on the right and rear sides of the turret are full.  I havn't been able to find photos of the left side of the turret, but the racks would not contain enough grousers  for each set of tracks, so I'm curious if those racks were full too.

 

6.) No ammo can is fitted to the turret .30 cal.  Photos of the other tanks show the ammo cans, but I'm curious as to how much the guns were actually used.  M4A1s from the 767th tank battalion that landed elsewhere on Kwajalein did not carry turret .50 cals.

 

7.) No brush guards are visible on the periscopes.  No searchlight is mounted either.

 

 

Edited October 10 by Matt B

[modelling minion]

You have picked up on some good points of detail there Matt, you can clearly see the brush marks in the white but as you say the dark patches don't show these which makes me wonder what they are. 

[JackG]

I had the same problem getting the upper hull sides to fit perfectly around the sponsoons.   The sponsoon halves also did not mate perfectly together either.  The bottom corners of the glacis plate also have a nub of plastic  sticking out on the underside that really does not key into any location.  Seems more in the way of obtaining a clean fit than anything else.

[Matt B]

12 hours ago, JackG said:

I had the same problem getting the upper hull sides to fit perfectly around the sponsoons.   The sponsoon halves also did not mate perfectly together either.  The bottom corners of the glacis plate also have a nub of plastic  sticking out on the underside that really does not key into any location.  Seems more in the way of obtaining a clean fit than anything else.

Yeah there's definitely some odd attachment points and a little flash where I didn't expect it, but with some patience it's coming together nicely.  This is my first AFV Club kit, so its a good learning experience.

[Matt B]

Back working on Hothead.  I’m waiting on a shipment of plastic bits (sheet, strip, angles, channels) so I can get started on the wading trunk, so I spent a couple hours this morning doing the tedious work of assembling the running gear.  
 

Before I bought the kit I had bought several detail sets from Tiger Model Designs for the bogeys and idlers, but quite honestly I don’t see much improvement over the kit parts so I’m going to save them for future builds.  I figured I would at least use the road wheels since they are more detailed than the kit wheels which are hollow in the back, but they were requiring a bit of cleanup, so I went with the kit wheels after realizing the backs really won’t be too visible when it’s all built up.  One of the knocks on this kit when it first came out was that while it included two types of stamped road wheels, it only included four of each, so you had to mix them for a complete set.  At some point AFV corrected this, because my kit contains eight of each as well as a couple other pieces like turret hatch framing that wasn’t included before either, so kudos to them for correcting that.

 

Post cleanup and pre assembly….

 

 

And then post assembly with a test run on the hull.  I stippled some Mr Surfacer on the idler mounts to add some cast texturing.  Slowly but surely starting to take shape!

 

 

[modelling minion]

Taking shape very nicely Matt, I like the idea for adding texture to the idler mounts I might steal that for my own build. 

[dnl42]

It's coming together nicely! 

 

I have markings for an M8 HMC in Normandy with a wading trunk, so I'm quite interested in what you'll produce.

[PlaStix]

Lovely progress Matt. Coming together very nicely.

Kind regards,

Stix

[Matt B]

In the spirit of actually finishing a build, I'm making a marking change.  I've got some other stalled builds I want to get to and quite honestly I don't feel like messing around with a wading trunk at the moment.  I'll be sticking with the same unit, the 4th Marine Tank Battalion, but during a different battle.  So instead of Kwajalein, I'll be doing a Stuart from the invasion of Saipan using the kit decals for a tank named "Margaret".  Markings are pretty simple with just the unit emblem on each sponson and the name on each side of the turret. 

 

Below is a photo of a different M5A1 from the same unit during the battle.  As you can see, this allows me to bypass the wading trunk since it was removed and left just the adapter plates on each side of the engine access doors on the back.  I'll still build a Kwajalein Stuart sometime, just not now.

 

[modelling minion]

Sounds like a sensible decision to me Matt and will still make for an interesting model.