Chinese PzKw I Ausf A

I normall don't do German armor. However, I wanted to build a Pzkw I ever since I saw this photograph. The photo is of what looks like a platoon element of Chinese PzKw Ia light tanks in Chinese service. They have been captured by Imperial Japanese Army troops outside Nanking in 1937.

The caption on the photo reads (roughly):

Japanese soldiers cheering while standing on Chinese Army Panzer Ia tanks on the Nanking front. This photo was taken by a cameraman of the Osaka Mainichi Newspaper. The photo was taken at Hsia-Kuan. The vehicles seem to have been abandoned by Chinese troops retreating from the Yangtze River since there does not appear to be any damage to them. This photo was taken December, 1937.




One of the captured Chinese panzers was sent to Japan where it was handed over to the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Technology Division for evaluation. They were mostly interested in the engine and drive train and tested those pretty extensively. When when they were done with that they placed it on public display (didn't say where) for an unspecified period of time after which they handed the vehicle back over to the Army. Sadly, it doesn't say what the Army did with the vehicle.

Eventually this will find it’s way into a diorama depicting the picture. This is the Dragon PzKw Ia Smart Kit. I built it stock box except for two stretched sprue flash hiders I added to the muzzles of the machine guns in the turret.

I painted the vehicle with Tamiya acrylics and weathered with dark oil washes and ground pastels. I created the Chinese roundel on the computer and printed it on Testors decal paper.

There was a lot of chatter on several discussion forums about how these vehicles were painted. One school of thought is that German tanks in the mid 1930’s were painted in a three color camo pattern so the tanks exported to the Chinese HAD to be painted the same way. I still maintain that this and several other photos of the captured Chinese tanks show NO camo pattern. Anyway, it’s fun to speculate.

Academy M3 Lee

I’ve always had a weakness for the M3 Lee/Grant tanks. Besides being cool early war tanks they’ve got lots of rivets and nice big hatches to show off busy interiors. The Academy kits are really quite an improvement over the venerable Tamiya kits and other worldly compared to the Monogram 1/32 scale kits from the 1970’s. While not without warts, most of the problems can be fixed without too much trouble.

The biggest problem was the well documented problems with the suspension. I fixed this with the very nice Tasca aftermarket set. The tracks are vinyl and while better than the ones offered in the old Tamiya kits they are still, well, vinyl. I replaced these with AFV Club individual link tracks.

I added the Eduard PE sets and a little scratch building to the interior and exterior. The cavernous interior by far took most of the time. Even with the nice side doors it’s still sad how little of the work you can see. So, I added turret gear teeth to the turret ring so it could be displayed sans the turret. In addition to the PE bits I added wiring, some resin stowage, doors on the ammo storage, headphones for the radio and printed decals for placards etc. I chipped and scuffed the interior heavily with a #9 graphite pencil. Then I gave it an overall wash followed by a pin wash using black artist oils.

The exterior was a little more straight forward. I added PE lenses, straps on the pioneer tools and other bits and pieces. I drilled out the hinges on the side doors and slid some stretched sprue in to make them articulate. I got such a kick out of opening and closing them that I wore out one side and had to rebuild the hinges with plastic pipe. I can't say it's just my four year old who breaks my models now. The dimensions on the turret were off quite a bit and needed some reshaping which didn’t present too much of a problem. I added cast texturing to the turret, 75mm gun housing and transmission housing with Mr. Surfacer. The one highly visible error left was the stowage bins on the rear engine deck. The ones provided in the kit are undersized. I opted not to fix this since the replacements in the PE set were the same dimension, thus not correcting the problem and I was already way behind schedule with the project. With 20/20 hindsight I wish I would have fixed them but all in all they are not too distracting.

I pre-painted and masked the national and tactical markings using Eduard vinyl masks and ones I fabricated myself from Tamiya tape. The base color is Tamiya XF-62 Olive Drab lightened a little with XF-60 Dark Yellow. I then post shaded with this mix heavily diluted and lightened with XF-57 Buff. I then added hull numbers provided by Archer Fine Transfers which are top notch. Following this I gave the vehicle judicious chips and scuffs with a #9 artist pencil.

I gave the vehicle an overall wash of straight black followed by selective pin washes in black around shadowed areas and the fuel caps etc. The final weathering touch was a selective dusting with ground up pastel chalk.

Fiat Carro Armato L 6/40

I was really excited when Tamiya partnered with Italeri and released the L6 kit. It had many of the things I love in armor kits; an unusual subject, an interior, link and length tracks, a photo etch fret and lots of rivets. The hefty price tag aside, I wasn’t disappointed. The kit is, like most Italeri offerings nicely engineered. The detail is on the clunky side but still represents the feel of the real thing. The kit went together well, that is until I dropped the turret mantlet. As I pushed back my chair to rescue the part from the carpet monster I rolled over it and smashed it to smithereens. Luckily a good friend in Japan was kind enough to order the part for me from Tamiya and in a week or two I was back in business. Whew!

I built the kit for the most part stock box, the only exception being some K&S brass screen over the engine compartment firewall. It was just too easy to see into the empty engine compartment through the open side hatch. The interior is pretty sparse and amounts to a “through the hatch” interior set, but still, it’s nicer than nothing. Model Victoria offers a full resin interior but with the kit already running $65 I really didn’t want to load on another $100.

I painted the tank with Tamiya acrylics. I mixed XF-59 Desert Yellow and XF-60 Dark Yellow for the base coat and post shaded with the above mix diluted with XF-57 Buff. I chipped and scuffed the paint with an artist’s pencil and then blended all with a wash of straight black artist oils thinned with mineral spirits. The final touch was a dusting with pastels.

The base is a 79 cent Wal Mart picture frame. The ground work is wood putty. This is the first time I’ve used wood putty and I was very pleased. As it dried it only cracked in a couple small places that were easily filled. I covered the base with talcum powder to keep the putty from sticking to the model when I imprinted the tracks. The rocks are courtesy of my tomato garden. The destroyed building is plaster cast in a simple mold I build from Evergreen sheet plastic. The reinforcing rods in the wall are made from lead solder.

Type III Ho-Ni

I’ve always been intrigued with the collection of Japanese armor that never got the chance to tangle with American forces in Operations Coronet and Olympic. It would have been very interesting to see how the heavier armor would have fared against the late model Shermans etc. The Type III Ho Ni falls into t his category. Only around 50 were built and all of these were kept on Kyushu when the war ended. Had the war lasted until the invasion took place there would probably have been double or triple that number. These vehicles would have been committed to the battle in late 1945 when US forces landed around Miyazaki and Kagoshima. As it worked out all were evaluated by Ordnance branch personnel and then scrapped.


The Fine Molds kit is a nice kit but lacking in two areas; tracks and interior detail. The only tracks that come the kit are the classic black vinyl and for vinyl tracks they are not that bad. Even still, it’s impossible to get anything like a realistic sag in them so I opted for the exquisite Model Kasten workable link tracks.


With the exception of a very nice Type 90 75 mm gun, there is no interior detail at all. This is unforgivable given the huge hatches that are just begging to be posed open. I pirated a firewall, ammo lockers and driver’s position from the Tamiya Type I Ho Ni kit. All fit well with just a little trimming to fit. The inside of the casemate lacked any detail as well so I added scratch built vision blocks and lead foil grab straps to the hatch interiors.

The rest of the model was finished pretty much stock. I painted the vehicle in a standard late war three color camouflage. I used Tamiya acrylics mixed to the right shade using my eyeball and the new Tank Power publication on IJA camouflage and markings. I opted to mask lines rather than make them sprayed even though the few surviving post war photos of original Type III Ho-Nis seem to show sprayed on camouflage patterns. This is nothing but artistic license on my part. I like the look of the hard edge camo better and there is no proof that any Ho-Nis weren’t painted this way anyway.



I post shaded each camouflage color, then used a #9 artist pencil to place judicious chips and dings to the paint job. After that I gave the vehicle several washes using black artist oils and white mineral spirits. I made sure to accentuate downward strokes on the large nearly vertical sides of the casemate. The decals are those that came with the kit. The final weathering was accomplished with ground pastel chalk. The final touch was some graphite and silver artist pencil on the track shoes.

I experimented with hand scrawl on the casemate sides and wasn’t happy with how it came out. I used a white pastel artists pencil and it just didn’t look quite right so I scrubbed it off and repainted those sections. Live and learn I guess.

Type 92 Combat Car

The Pit Road Type 92 is an excellent little kit. It doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles but it is of an interesting subject. As far as I know it’s the only game in town in 1/35 scale for the Type 92. The molding is crisp and while some of the detail leans toward the chunky side it’s still acceptable.

The drawbacks are the vinyl tracks and the complete lack of interior. This is a shame on a vehicle with nice large hatches begging to be left open. The tracks are a cut above the traditional black vinyl tracks found in earlier kits but they are decidedly one dimensional. They also fit very tight around the suspension thus omitting any track sag completely. The teeth on the drive sprocket had to be thinned to almost needle points to get them to mate with the tracks. A set of link and length tracks would have been a nice option here. Overall the vinyl tracks marred what is otherwise an enjoyable kit.



I built the kit pretty much stock box. The fit of the parts was exceptional. No problems at all. The only exceptions to the stock build were simple brush guards of stretched sprue on the headlights, MV lenses, some minor detailing on the machine gun barrels and a piece of wire mesh on the muffler guard. I threw on a tarp and an epoxy air-identification flag for fun.

I painted the vehicle in the standard IJA four color camouflage scheme common in the early days of the Pacific War and during the China Incident. I masked the pattern and used Tamiya acrylics. After post shading I weathered the tank with an overall wash of heavily thinned black artist’s oil paint. I followed this with pastel dry brushing and shading.

Tamiya F4U-1 Birdcage Corsair

Ah yes, another aircraft! This is the Tamiya F4U-1 Birdcage Corsair in 1/72nd scale. I had my eye on this kit for a while and picked it up in Tokyo when I saw it on a bargain table for 500 yen. What a beautiful little kit. Like just about all of Tamiya’s products, the engineering is impeccable. All parts fit perfectly. I used the Eduard PE set which added a lot to the cockpit area. Not much else to tell… I used Tamiya Light Sea Blue for the upper surfaces and Light Gull Gray for the undersurfaces. I post shaded and gave some nicks and dings with a silver #9 artist pencil. I gave the whole aircraft a wash with black oil paint diluted with mineral spirits. After that I dry brushed the plane with ground light beige and white pastel chalk and lightly shaded the area around the exhaust with black pastels.