Bronco CV33

While I was in Iraq I ran across a derelict CV33 left over from WW2. These were purchased in the late 30's or early 40's by the Iraqi government from Italy and used in 1941 against the British in Habiniyah, Fallujah and Basra. Needless to say, I was pretty excited and made a nuisance of myself crawling in and out, over and under the vehicle examining it. I got really excited when this Bronco kit was released. It’s a beautiful little kit and represents the vehicle (at least as far as I can tell) pretty accurately.

The kit is engineered very well and goes together without any fit issues at all. The interior is a little sparse though and benefitted from a few rivets and wires in spots highly visible from the two large hatches. I actually did a fair bit of work on the dual machine gun mount but not much of it is visible on the finished model. I also scratch built a few ammo boxes for the racks. The seats weren't very detailed so I removed them and added some textured ones that I made from Tamiya epoxy putty.

The engine is nicely detailed and the large circular radiator is a gem, though completely invisible when the engine deck goes on. I added some belts and plug wires.

The vehicle I examined was in pretty bad shape. I was able to scrape down to the metal to ascertain how it was painted over the years. I encountered a red primer coat then a layer of green which seemed to be the original factory color scheme. I couldn’t tell if there was a camouflage pattern but that really didn’t matter for my purposes here. On top of the green layer was a yellowish beige layer. My guess is that the Iraqis took delivery of the vehicles in green and repainted them in desert camouflage at some point. No way to tell if it was before or after the battles in 1941. I put a base coat of dark green that I planned to let show through in a few places. Next was the Iraqi national insignia. I masked this in layers with Tamiya tape and hand painted the center. The next coat was Tamiya Buff mixed with Tamiy Desert Yellow. I post shaded with the same mix heavily diluted and lightened with Tamiya Flat White.
I added paint chips and scuff marks with a #32 artist’s pencil and weathered with a wash consisting of Gumbacher Black and Burnt Umber. This subdued the chips and scuffs and blended them into the paint. The scenic base represents a dry well somewhere in Basra Province which is in the south of Iraq on the Iranian border. There are many small wells dotting the desert countryside there. The wells are seasonal and are dry for much of the year (as represented in this scene). We checked them a lot when I was over there because they are used by the insurgents as dead drops and weapons caches. They are hard to spot and you almost have to be right on top of them to find them. They consist mostly of a pile of rocks lining the well shaft and are covered with a piece of plywood or sheet metal and a tarp. Nowadays they use those blue plastic tarps but I imagine back in the day they used canvas tarps. The empty British “flimsies” water cans are from Tiger Model Designs. The water bucket is from the spares box. The only real modification to the kit I did was to cut off and hollow out the radiator cap to represent the vehicle being out of water. The groundwork is a thin layer of Celluclay spread over a 97 cent Wal Mart picture frame. Rocks and sand from my tomato garden were added with white glue. I painted and shaded the groundwork with Tamiya Desert Yellow and Buff. The vegetation is Seafoam and theatrical facial hair. Once the vechile was in place I blended it and the groundwork together with pastels.