UVS models: Salute 2021 11/12/2020

[ripley]

While the  track on the casement rear are put on upside down ( didn't notice it , should of , I did it myself once  ) , I assumed the track on the sides are welded on as permanent extra armor

[ultravanillasmurf]

Oops! The photograph in NVG 37 page 38 - grrr. The drawing on page 6 of Bradford's Late War book has no track in place.

I have probably repeated that mistake all round. I had thought it was on brackets and  the bar just held it in place.

The track on the side is held in place by bar and bracket similar to the front.


It has nearly as much track as armour as Hercules.

It will eventually get skirts (when I find them), if only to hide the uninspiring Warlord running gear.

[Ballardian]

 Lovely job on the stowage (& I'll be shamelessly stealing the ideas for the next StuG I paint)

[ultravanillasmurf]

Thanks.

It does also hide that I managed to lose one of the spare wheels.

[Captain Blood]

Yes indeed. Great stowage as usual UVS. 

[ultravanillasmurf]

While I wait for Rubicon to get round to a Sherman V (I can wait all day...), Here are some more uses of the German Stowage set.

The white pegs on the turret are for soft stowage.

Interestingly, the Warlord travel lock resembles the normal 75mm one (unlike the Rubicon 17 pounder gun lock which matches the George Bradford drawings). So I removed the moulded on one and replaced it with a 75mm one from the composite (not sure If I am building two Sherman ICs). A cross piece at the bottom made some improvement.

Now a question, I have seen photographs of Churchill tanks with armour at the back of the hatch (NVG Churchill book and the Osprey Tank Crew book) to protect the commander while not buttoned up, but did Shermans ever have similar armour?

[ripley]

Wow . you must have picked up 3 or 4 stowage sets , thats a lot of Panther track .  I haven't seen the extra armor on Shermans , I think that with the 3 man turret crew having to get out of one hatch ( on most models ) might be something to do with it, sort of like they got rid of the 50cal as well . Churchills have those wonderful side escape hatches for the crew to use if under fire . BUt , I've also seen it on  Cromwells , and those are small hatches to get out of in a hurry . Maybe late in war when the Allies worried more about snipers than tank on tank battles ?

[Ballardian]

 Nice work, it looks great (I think I've found one of his troop mates).

[ultravanillasmurf]

Nice find. That does provide an answer to where to put the registration number.

Might use that as a prototype for one of my remaining Italeri M4s.

There are probably four sprues (two boxes) worth of German track plus the spare track from a Tiger.
http://forum.rubiconmodels.com/index.php?topic=281.msg2410#msg2410

[ripley]

Wow , thats neat . Looks like a bunch of the Canadian pattern track ( Ram / Sexton) on the rear half of that Sherman . Any idea if its a Canadian Regt ?. We really need someone to release a whole bunch of  single Churchill and Sherman track links for kit bashing . I wonder if Rubicon might take the plunge on day ?

[ultravanillasmurf]

There was a T34 former monument that had been reactivated in Ukraine that had track added as armour over the front mud guards. I did contemplate something similar for the Sherman, but getting the track to bend to fit was too difficult.

Yes, we need individual links for Shermans and Churchills.

[Pinky]

I like the Firefly.  Imagine the weight all those track links added to the tank!  In film of them you can see that a lot of these tracks were only partly welded on, and moved about a lot when the tank was moving.  So it probably made them even noisier too.

[ultravanillasmurf]

I have the Osprey modelling the M4/76 book and on page 47 there is a picture showing the suspension compression on an E2  (that had five tonnes of additional armour). I suspect the sandbags had similar effects.

I can understand why some generals banned the practice.

[Pinky]

Patton banned sandbags, but advocated adding slabs of armour, which presumably weighed much the same.  It's been said that, for a supposed tank expert, Patton was remarkably ignorant about the technical aspects. 

[Tracks]

He was out to get a job done and to waste to much time worrying about the little things.