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Chieftain tank


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I've recently bought the Tamiya 1/35 chieftain Mk. 5 kit to build, and have been reading some rather negative reviews of the kit. As far as I can tell the kit seems reasonably accurate, but there are one or two areas I'm not sure about, such as the layout of the engine deck. I found a three - view drawing of a Mk. 5, which shows this area exactly as the kit, but I've also seen pics that show a different arrangement.

Would I be correct in thinking that the deck screens were similar to German WW II tanks, i.e removable covers, or did the Chieftain have different arrangements according to each mark? I found the registration No. on the Tank Museum website, and it would appear that the kit is actually a Mk. II, so is the kit accurate for that version ?

I would be grateful for any help that you guys could come up with, as I'm not too familiar with tanks of the post war years, :cheers:

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I've recently bought the Tamiya 1/35 chieftain Mk. 5 kit to build, and have been reading some rather negative reviews of the kit. As far as I can tell the kit seems reasonably accurate, but there are one or two areas I'm not sure about, such as the layout of the engine deck. I found a three - view drawing of a Mk. 5, which shows this area exactly as the kit, but I've also seen pics that show a different arrangement.

Would I be correct in thinking that the deck screens were similar to German WW II tanks, i.e removable covers, or did the Chieftain have different arrangements according to each mark? I found the registration No. on the Tank Museum website, and it would appear that the kit is actually a Mk. II, so is the kit accurate for that version ?

I would be grateful for any help that you guys could come up with, as I'm not too familiar with tanks of the post war years, :cheers:

Although this from the deep recesses of my memory from when I worked on the things in the mid-70's, there were few if any changes to the engine decks on Chieftains.

The front set of decks covering the engine hinged outwards, as did the sets over the gearbox at the rear (although I seem to remember that the central covers over the gearbox were lifted out, not hinged). you should note that in general the rear gearbox covers were normally covered with a film of oil and other fluids since the fans picked everything up frm the hull and blew it out of those grilles.

As I remember it most of the changes to Chieftain were actually internal which is why the mark numbers changed - at least up until the searchlights were done away with.

I'm sure the experts among us can give you far more information and pictures - I just repaired them when they broke down lol - engines at some stages had a life of around 200km before they blew the cylinder liners.

Chieftain - best tank in the world, if it broke down in the right place!

HTH

Graeme

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The Tamiya kit builds into a reasonably accurate representation of a Mark 3 albeit the details are a bit soft. The Chieftain nomenclature thing is a nightmare to understand but I will try and explain it. Most Chieftains were built as mark 2 or 3, (only a handful were built as Mark 1s) with the 650hp L60 multifuel engine. The only other new builds were Mark 5s which tried to address the shortcomings of the reliability and power problems of the 2s and 3s. Part of the solution was to for an upgraded 720 hp engine and beefed up transmission, hence the Tamiya kit is inaccurate with respect to the deck covers as these were changed.

There was a programme of upgrades for Marks 2 and 3 to bring them up to Mark 5 standard and was called Exercise Totem Pole, (it was, honest!!). Totem pole was split into X, Z and Y packages as follows:

X - changes to sighting system

Y - Automotive upgrades

Z - Engine, gearbox and NBC upgrades

Following completion of the upgrades, the Mark 2 and 3 tanks would become Mark 6,7 or 8 but retain their original registration. All of the Mark 5,6,7 and 8s were later upgraded with regard to fire control systems and became Mark 9s. A bolt on armour package for the turret and drivers station later became available, (known as Stillbrew) and created the Mark 10. Finally, the Thermal Observation and Gunnery System was fitted to some tanks to upgrade it to a similar standard as Challenger 1 and became the Mark 11. This is when the big searchlight box disappeared. There was a whole range of sub marks in between which makes it even more confusing!!

I have got quite a bit of Chieftain reference material . If you require any further help drop me a line and I will see what I can do.

All the best

Howard

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Many thanks, guys for your helpful posts. Howardmoon has kindly offered to send me some info he has on the chieftain, which will be a great help.

Once I've built the model I''ll post some pics for inspection. Right now finishing off a Dragon Tiger II ( Pics to follow) :cheers:

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Many thanks, guys for your helpful posts. Howardmoon has kindly offered to send me some info he has on the chieftain, which will be a great help.

Once I've built the model I''ll post some pics for inspection. Right now finishing off a Dragon Tiger II ( Pics to follow) :cheers:

Just like to say a big "THANK YOU" to Howardmoon for sending me a whole bunch of stuff regarding the Chieftain, which arrived today. It would appear that i can make a Mk. 3 from the kit without too much modification.

Once again a big "THANK YOU" to Howardmoon. the Britmodeller forum comes up trumps once again! :thumbsup::cheers:

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Just like to say a big "THANK YOU" to Howardmoon for sending me a whole bunch of stuff regarding the Chieftain, which arrived today. It would appear that i can make a Mk. 3 from the kit without too much modification.

Once again a big "THANK YOU" to Howardmoon. the Britmodeller forum comes up trumps once again! :thumbsup::cheers:

Its a pleasure to be able to help. Let me know if you need anything else.

Cheers

Howard

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