MiniArt M3 Stuart Early Prod (35412) 1:35

[Mike]

M3 Stuart Early Prod (35412)

1:35 MiniArt via Creative Models Ltd

 

 

The M3 Stuart was designed before the US went to war, based upon the experiences of the British, which led to the US top brass deciding that their M2 light tank was obsolete. While the radial engined M3 was an improvement over the M2, it suffered from an underpowered M6 main gun at only 37mm, which although it was improved later in the war, the crews had to suffer with it for some considerable time. The British troops in Africa used it first against the superior tanks of the Afrika Korps, but they fared badly in combat, suffering from the lack of range of the Stuart in the wide-open spaces of the African desert.  It was fast and manoeuvrable however, and a British driver’s comment that she was a "honey" to drive led to one of its nicknames during the war.

 

The M3A1 was an improved version that deleted the heavy sponson mounted machine guns of the initial production, and some of these used more conventional diesel engines instead of the bulky radials, which gave the crew more room for other equipment.  It also had a new turret with a basket for the turret crew to stand in, and no cupola for the commander that gave the tank a lower profile, and added a gun stabilisation system that helped with vertical alignment of targets while the tank was on the move, ironing out the bumps for the gunners.  In British service it was known as the Stuart III and with the diesel engine version was designated the IV.

 

It was hopelessly outclassed by Axis armour in Europe for tank-on-tank engagements however, and was soon relegated to infantry support and recce roles, where it performed well.  It was more successful in the Pacific theatre against the lightly armoured Japanese tanks in the jungle, where medium and heavy tanks could soon flounder in the mud and heavy foliage in jungle conditions.  It continued to be used to the end of the war by the Allies in the Pacific area, although Russia, another user of the Stuart, disliked it intensely and refused to take the upgraded M5 design that followed the M3A3. Variants were used well into the 60s, and Brazil even built their own version with redesigned upper hull that carried a 90mm gun. Paraguay still had a few of its ancient original stock of 12 beyond the turn of the millennium, which is astonishing, considering the age of the design.

 

 

The Kit

This is a new boxing of a very recent tooling from our friends at MiniArt, who are producing an amazing output of new kits and partial re-tools in recent years, which is doubly-impressive given the abominable situation in Ukraine over the last few years.  This kit arrives in a top-opening box with a painting of an early production Stuart on the front, surrounded by a herd of zebras, which gives its location as Africa, unless it was plundering through a zoo.  Inside the box are twelve sprues of various sizes in grey styrene, a clear sprue, a fret of Photo-Etch (PE) brass in a card envelope, a decal sheet, and the instruction booklet, which is printed in colour on glossy paper, with profiles of the decal options on the rearmost pages.  Detail is excellent as we’ve come to expect from MiniArt, and as this is an exterior kit, the interior isn’t provided, but the exterior and running gear are well-defined, and the tracks are supplied as link-and-length, taking the benefits of individual links and making the job a lot less labour intensive without much loss of detail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction begins with the vehicle’s floor with a choice of two styles of floor hatch, then making curved transmission armour at the front of the tank, which is detailed with various towing eyes, additional bolt heads that are cut from the sprue runner, and a central frame that can be folded from PE or replaced by a single styrene part.  Now the hull sides can be fitted, but not before they are detailed with various external parts, adding final drive housings to the front ends, using the bogie axle ends to locate the parts on the sides of the floor.  The rear bulkhead is built with a hatch space in the upper half, gluing it to the rear of the vehicle.  The rear hatch is in two sections, one of which has a PE clapping plate, both having handles, posing them closed to hide the lack of engine.  Above the hatch is an overhang with a PE mesh horizontal insert and styrene rear, with a couple of towing eyes mounted on the lower edge of the bulkhead.

 

The next assembly is a thirty-cal bow machine gun, which has a vertical magazine moulded into the underside of the breech, finished with a circular mount that is slotted through the glacis plate from the inside, plus a strengthening strap under the driver’s hatch.  It is glued into position on the front of the tank, fitting the transmission inspection hatch with handle in the centre, and adding a pair of towing shackles to the front.  The driver’s hatch is in two parts, and can be posed closed for battle, or with both parts folded open to allow the driver to see the full vista, which would of course expose the lack of interior.  A two-layer T-shaped cross-member is located over the upper glacis, adding a bracket that supports the headlamp, and a pair of bearing spacers to the final drive housings.  As already mentioned, the earliest Stuarts had sponson-mounted machine guns, which extend from the main hull out over the tracks, roughly along the middle third of the vehicle’s length.  The two sponson floors are glued into position, and two .30cal machine guns are trapped between two-part mounts, one fitted to each sponson, sliding through the front armour.  The sides of the sponsons can then be built around the guns, with a short wall to the rear, and a long panel along the side.  Two hatches are fixed to the front of the upper hull after adding an extra layer behind, a clear vision port, and openers to the sides.  If you intend to pose the hatches up, you have the option of leaving the inclement weather inner hatches in position, which have large panes of glass and windscreen wipers to save filling the tank with precipitation.  The open outer hatches are propped up with a pair of short stays from their top hinges, but the usual caveat about the interior still applies.

 

The hull roof is next, starting with the panel that has the turret ring moulded-in, adding additional nuts on the top ring from the sprue runners, and a pair of filler caps on the deck behind it, shaving away clasp details around them.  The completed part is lowered into place on the hull, turning to the engine deck next, placing the panel after fitting handles, gluing it in position and fitting a pair of rear lights on brackets to the sides, adding a little connecting wire if you wish.  The main deck panel has a PE shroud to the forward edge to deflect incoming rounds or debris, plus another PE bracket for one of the aerials is attached to the right, with another shelf-bracket mounted on the side wall slightly lower and further to the side than the other.  The aerial bases are each made from two parts, adding 73mm of stretched sprue, wire, or carbon fibre rod to represent the aerials themselves.  A pair of dome-topped cylindrical air-boxes are built from four parts each and are attached to the rear of the sponson on brackets on both sides.

 

 

We finally get some wheels for the tank, starting with the two-part drive sprockets and a pair of over-size idler wheels, which are trapped between two halves of the swing-arm, adding a PE rim to both sides.  The road wheels are mounted in two-wheel bogies, each one made from ten parts, building four in total, handed for each side.  The road wheels flex-fit into position between the arms of the bogies, so that they can be mounted on the sides of the vehicle in shallow recesses along with the idlers and drive sprockets, with three return rollers on short axles above the main run.  As discussed earlier, the tracks are link-and-length, using long single-part lengths under the wheels, individual links around sharp curves, and shorter lengths where the tracks are relatively straight.  The various sections are attached to the sprues at the edges, and each short portion has a unique tab and slot format to ensure that parts can only be put together in the correct manner.  There are a few ejector-pin marks on the inside of the longer track link sections, but these are raised and on flat surfaces, so shouldn’t be difficult to remove with a sanding stick or sharp blade, and won’t slow you don’t too much.  When the track runs are suitably cured, fenders are added over the open areas, the rear straight sections fitted with a curved end to reduce kicked up mud, while the front section have inner side skirts to prevent mud ingress, which is improved further by gluing a PE web between it and the leading edge of the glacis plate, along with a PE stiffening strap further back.

 

Before we start festooning the vehicle with pioneer tools, a pair of headlamps with clear lenses are placed, one on each fender protected by a PE cage, and both with a short length of wire leading back to hole in the glacis plate.  The pioneer tools are fully styrene tools that have their clasps moulded-in, and are dotted all over the horizontal surfaces of the vehicle, including an axe, pickaxe shaft and head, and a shovel.  More tools are located on the forward sponsons, adding PE tie-downs around the deck for securing stowage or camouflage.  The twin towing rope requires the modeller to provide either a 157mm length of braided wire or thread, fitting a pair of styrene eyes to the ends, and clamping it in place with PE brackets along the left sponson and fender.    Now for the turret, starting with the main 37 mm M6 gun, the gun tube formed by a single part with hollow muzzle that is surrounded by a two-part frame, and has the halves of the breech closed around the rear, adding extra detail on the right, and a breech protector to the left side, followed by a four-part pivot that are fixed around the gun without glue, then the coaxial machine gun is attached to the right side of the breech, and its ammo box is located on the left side, fed by a ‘bridge’ of link over the main gun in a guide to the breech of the smaller gun, dumping spent rounds in a box-like bag underneath.  The barrel is pushed through the mantlet and inserted into the front of the turret, which has been made from a well-detailed ring, with the faceted turret sides arranged around it after being detailed with vision blocks themselves.  The roof has a yoke inserted on its underside in stowed or combat positions, and is glued in place, sliding the mantlet armour over the main and coax guns from in front.  The commander’s cupola is similarly faceted, and each side is prepared by fitting a vision block in the slot, creating an asymmetrical hexagonal shape, and deciding whether to pose the turret crew’s vision ports open or closed.  The commander's hatch is a flat panel with a lock on the upper edge, and hinges on the lower, which can be fitted open or closed, with more vision ports on the turret sides posed open or closed around the rest of the perimeter.  Another .30cal machine gun is trapped between a two-part mount with adjuster handle, and fixed to a short column that is secured to the rear left side of the turret on curved brackets moulded into the surface.  An optional two-part ammo box with a length of link can be fixed to the side of the gun, or if you wish to leave it off, an alternative stub part is supplied in its place.  With that, the turret can be dropped into position to complete the model.

 

 

Markings

There are six varied decal options included on the small sheet, and you’d still be almost correct if you guessed that they are all in some variation of WWII Allied green, with only their individual markings to tell them apart.  The exception is the specially painted 1,000th tank produced, which was painted white to stand out for the ceremony.  From the box you can build one of the following:

 

• 192nd Tank Battalion, Luzon, Philippines, December 1941
• 2nd Independent Tank Company, Free French Forces, Kano, Nigeria, 1942
• American Car & Foundry Plant, 1,000th Tank
• 192nd Tank Brigade, Red Army, Volkhov Offensive, Oryol Region, Summer, 1942
• US Marine Corps., Australia, Spring, 1943
• Brazilian Army, 1944

 

 

 

Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin matt carrier film cut close to the printed areas.

 

 

Conclusion

It’s great to have this much detail present in a newly tooled kit of the diminutive Stuart, or Honey as the Brits called it, and it deserves to become the de facto standard for the scale.  If you don’t want to pick up the original Interior kits because they contain too many parts or will keep you occupied to long, then this one should fill the gap perfectly.

 

Very highly recommended.

 

At time of writing, this kit is on heavy discount from our friends at Creative Models Ltd.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of

[HenrikChaves]

On 04/06/2025 at 12:20, Mike said:

The twin towing rope requires the modeller to provide either a 157mm length of braided wire or thread,

😞 Not cool..... Such a detailed model and requires this kind of scratch build.