Yet Another IDF M4A1(76)W

This kit is a far cry from the other IDF Sherman I did on this blog a few months ago. This time its the Dragon M4A1(76)W Operation Cobra Sherman. Both are M4A1(76) W Shermans but the similarities end there. This one is 1/35 scale, detailed, dimensionally accurate and goes together quite well. The box is chock full of extras like an aluminium barrel, clear periscope parts, brass shells and a metal tow cable.

I really don’t have anything bad to say about this kit. I build it stock from the box and it was a pleasure from start to finish. I’ve heard the complaints about it being a millimeter or two off in some areas and the cast texture of the hull and turret being overdone. Personally I disagree with both of those points. The kit compares well with my references (Hunnicutt). Everything that should be there is there. The texture on the cast parts of the kit compare very accurately with original vehicles I have examined. The only thing I might have changed had I been the King of DML would have been to include a set of DS tracks for those who run screaming from the presence of individual link tracks. But that’s just me.

I painted the kit using Tamiya XF-62 lightened to scale with XF-60 Dark Yellow. I painted and masked the tactical IDF insignia on the turret and hull. I cut the masks by hand using frisket paper. I used dry transfers from the Verlinden IDF Vehicle Set for the hull and mantlet number plates.

I strayed a little from my usual weathering process on this kit. After post shading I used pastels dissolved in mineral spirits as a wash. I used a light brown, almost buff pastel chalk so I had to make the wash very weak or else run the risk of the pastels overpowering the base coat of paint. It’s a tricky process because when the wash is wet it’s not possible to see the pastels, but when it dries it’s very visible. I had to creep along a little bit at a time until I was happy with the effect. Once that was done I gave the vehicle a final wash with black artist oils to deepen and bring out the details. This also served to give a pronounced 3D effect to the weathering. All the while I used distinct up and down brush strokes on the vertical surfaces with the washes. In the end I think it came off well. The weathering has a distinctly “earthy” feel to it that give the feel of many layers of road dust and grime. I will definitely give this technique a try again sometime.

The figure is from a very old Italeri Soviet Tank Crew set. I like to drop figures into hatches to give some sense of scale to the model.

In conclusion this is a terrific kit that doesn’t disappoint. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

Brewster Buffalo

The F2 Brewster Buffalo is one of the iconic WW2 aircraft. It represents that early part of the war when American forces, caught unprepared for the axis onslaught, soldiered on with the obsolete equipment they had on hand and accomplished their mission despite the superiority of enemy weapons.

Significant numbers of F2s were sold to the British and Dutch in early 1941 for use in the Pacific. When the Japanese advanced on Southeast Asia, they captured a cornucopia of Allied aircraft. At least sixteen British Buffalos were captured undamaged when Singapore fell. A whole squadron of Dutch Buffalos was nabbed intact at Jakarta as well. Some of these were shipped to Japan for evaluation at the Imperial Japanese Army Koku Gijitsu Kenkyujo, or Technical Air Intelligence Center (TAIC) at Tachikawa outside Tokyo. The Tachikawa air base was a major Japanese airplane manufacturing and testing facility. When I saw photos of captured British and Dutch B339s in Japanese livery with the Tachikawa TAIC insignia on their tails I just had to dress a Buffalo kit in these markings.

The Tamiya Brewster Buffalo kit was first released in the early 1970s. It has been re-released several times over the decades but has remained essentially the same. Even as old as it is it can be made up into a fine kit, even out of the box. The fit is excellent as we have all come to expect from Tamiya. The engraved detail is very good even by today’s standards and the dimensions, while not perfect, capture the proper look of the Brewster Buffalo and will satisfy all but die hard Buffalo fanatics. The detail in the cockpit and wheel well is a bit sparse but there are ample aftermarket resin and photo-etch sets on the market to trick out any part of the airplane you could possibly desire.While nice, the kit isn’t without its warts. Chief among its complaints is the canopy... it’s, well, crappy. It doesn’t come with any option to leave it open so if you spend any time and effort on the cockpit you’ll have to buy a vacuform replacement part (Squadron makes them). However, if you don’t like vacuform canopies (like me) all is not lost. The kit comes with two options for the canopy; one for the US F2A with a telescopic gunsight and one for the British used Model 339 with a reflective gunsight. Whichever version you choose to build, you can saw out the canopy hood from the spare set. This is what I did and I while I wasn’t entirely happy with the result it does serve to display any work done on the cockpit. The clear parts are very, very thick. In scale inches the canopy parts are about five inches thick. They can be thinned on the ends to some extent but in the end it’s something you just have to put up with if you decide to go that route. As many times as this kit has been reissued it would sure have been nice if Mr. Tamiya would have invested a little money in tooling an up to date set of clear parts for this kit. I for one would have been happy to pay a little more for a kit with one. The kit went together without any fit issues whatsoever. I spent more time on the photo etch cockpit from Eduard and cutting the clear canopy parts that I did assembling the rest of the kit combined. It’s really that easy. This is a great model for a beginner.

I masked and painted as many of the markings as possible. Painted markings and insignia will almost always look more realistic than decals no matter how much decal solvent you slather on. I’ve found the most effective way to mask is to apply the insignia or marking color and then apply a positive mask. I then paint the model as usual. When the base coat is done I remove the positive mask to reveal the painted marking. Simple markings like the Japanese hinomaru are ridiculously easy to paint and mask. More complicated insignia like US stars or RAF roundels require a little more planning but are still fairly simple to do.

I painted the upper surfaces with Tamiya XF-13 Japanese Army Green and post shaded with heavily thinned XF-60 Dark Yellow. The under surfaces were covered with XF-19 Sky Grey and also post shaded with XF-2 Flat White.The only decal I used was one of my own making. I hand drew the Tachikawa TAIC insignia (a stylized falcon) and scanned it as a JPEG image. I then printed the insignia on Testors White Decal Paper using an everyday inkjet printer.
I gave the kit a wash using black artist oils and white mineral spirits. The aircraft at the Tachikawa facility were not in field service but were put through thier paces during evaluation so I added some judicious chipping and wear using a silver Prismacolor pencil.This was a fun project. The sparseness of the detail gave me a chance to indulge my AMS and go a little wild with aftermarket parts. Even though it was a vintage kit it didn’t give me a lick of frustration fitting the parts together. It’s a real gem and easy to understand why even after all these years it’s still a popular kit with modelers.

T-28 Soviet Heavy Tank

With all of the relatively new companies jumping into the model manufacturing pool these days we armour modelers are blessed with a wide scope of subjects from which to choose. I could only have dreamed of this sort of variety back when I was a kid (which wasn’t all that long ago, at least in dog years). Indicative of this is the Soviet T-28 Model 1938 Medium Tank offered by relative newcomer Alanger, formerly of the Ukraine but now located in Moscow with offices in the US as well. The T-28 was a very unique tank with three turrets and a very pre-war, very Soviet feel to it. Besides this being a kit of an unusual but very interesting vehicle, what I like most is that it forces the modeler to go back to basics. This isn’t one of those Tamiya “shake the box and it assembles itself” kits. It requires patience and attention to basic modeling rules that we all learn to one extent or another, but forget at times with all the whiz-bang engineering that is flooding the market these past years.

This is a beefy kit with a very Russian feel to it. These are the people who built the world’s largest aircraft, fielded the largest tank armies, the largest submarines and set off a 57 megaton atomic bomb after all. It’s big, substantial and makes up for lack of flare and cutting edge moulding technology with some very innovative and downright clever engineering. The major parts (hull, turret etc.) are molded in very thick grey styrene and while much of the detail is a bit soapy there are some very nice delicate mouldings that make the kit a pleasure to work with. The kit consists of 608 parts in 10 sprues not including the individual link tracks and hull top and bottom. The kit isn’t a “weekend build” by any stretch of the imagination, but it can be built out of the box by any modeler with intermediate modeling skills and a willingness to dry fit the parts several times before taking the plunge and applying cement. The kit retails for around US$25 so it is relatively affordable.

In some respects, you get what you pay for. The kit comes in a sturdy box but unfortunately the sprues don’t come with poly bags or any interior packaging, just loose sprues rattling around in the box. In my kit there were more than a few bent, broken and otherwise damaged parts. Some of them, like the turret mounted antenna, were quite a bother to fix.

The moulding itself is a mixed bag. Like I mentioned above, many of the parts are beefy and thick, requiring thinning to look in scale. In scale the mud guards if left as is would represent steel approximately six inches thick. A little filing and sanding is in order here, but that is in our theme of bringing one back to basic modeling skills.

The kit comes with more interior than one would expect from a kit like this. There is a basic driver’s compartment, engine bay and the turret basket is more or less complete. I say more or less complete because while the interior is nice it certainly lacks the “busy” feel of an actual armoured fighting vehicle. The nice thing about it is, there is enough there that a modeler can leave the hatches open and not show a cavernous empty interior leaving his vehicle feeling like it’s on display with its figurative trouser fly down. (Hear that Tamiya, Fine Molds, AFV Club and Trumpeter?) By the same token, if the AMS (Advanced Modeler Syndrome) afflicted hobbyist wishes to spend his time tricking out the insides with lead wire, sheet styrene and all manner of aftermarket bits and bobs his time and effort will be well spent. There is really a lot of potential here.

The kit builds in fourteen steps beginning with the interior. The engine and final drive assemblies are basic, but as stated above they are a wonderful platform for the AMS sufferer to go hog wild. There is no aftermarket set that I know of for interior of this kit so the modeler is left to appeal to his scratch building and superdetailing skills. Other reviewers have criticized Alanger for not including the parts for the radiators and other large engine components, but even with all the available engine hatches open they wouldn’t be visible even if they were there. The same goes for the driver’s compartment and the turret basket. I spent a little time building a center ammunition rack for the turret and in the end very little of it could be seen. I smile knowing it’s there, but that’s just me.

What concerned me more than the spartan interior was the many sink holes in very inconvenient places. Again, this brings me back to the basic modeling skills theme. This kit will make you work in that area. Most were not so egregious as to ruin the kit, but it does take some effort, patience and attention to detail to get them all filled and sanded. The worst of them, and this may have just been my kit, was part B23, the barrel housing recuperator for the 76mm main gun. The tip of it wasn’t really so much a sink hole as it was a case of the plastic never really getting that far in the molding process. It took quite a while to build it up with putty and sand to the correct dimensions. Thank heaven for Tamiya Grey Putty.

The T-28 was large so it follows that the kit is large. There are many separate assemblies that make up the finished tank and it will pay dividends for the modeler to look ahead as he builds to the painting process. Some major assemblies like the huge blower fan on the rear end of the tank, are better left off until after painted. I saved myself some contributions to the swear jar and trips to the medicine cabinet for antacid by taking it slow and thinking a few steps ahead.

By and large the kit goes together well but as mentioned above, not without careful dry fitting. There are no locator holes or pins on this kit which makes it imperative to take it slow and enjoy what you are doing. Most of the exterior detail is very good and even approaches excellent in a few cases. As of this writing there is no photo etch or resin aftermarket set available for this kit specifically and with the exception of the tarpaulin rack and rear louver vents it really doesn’t need one that badly. The rack and vents can be built with plastic strip (notice that back to basics theme again?) or, if time is an issue Eduard does offer a T-28 aftermarket set for the AER kit which contains these parts. There is a smattering of other small bits that are useful in the set as well but you will still be left with many redundancies that will either not fit the Alanger kit or that you simply will not need. It’s not expensive ($8.80 USD from Great Models.com) so it’s not like you won’t get your money’s worth if you don’t use the whole set. I used it for the tarpaulin rack and consigned most of the rest of the frets to the spares box.

One aftermarket item I did splurge on was caterpillar tracks. The tracks that come with the kit are not bad at all. In fact, as individual link tracks go these are fairly nice. I watched a set of the Model Kasten T-28 tracks sitting on my local hobby shop’s shelf for years though and they seemed lonely. I took pity on them and brought them home. I just have a weakness for MK tracks. They look wonderful and are to me a wonder of engineering. To get such small intricate parts assembled into actual working tracks just tickles me. There are also nice aftermarket white metal tracks available from Fruilmodel. I have not examined them myself but hear good things about them. That being said, while the MK set is superior, the tracks that come with the kit are not bad and with some careful trimming and sanding should build up nicely.

No matter what painting scheme you undertake, it is pretty straightforward so long as you tackle it in steps and then assemble the components. The instructions give suggestions for two vehicles. One is for (assuming my rusty, rarely used Russian is correct) a brown and green camouflage tank from the 1st Tank Division on the western front, August 1940 and another in winter camouflage from the 20th Tank Brigade during the winter war with Finland, 1939-1940. The kit comes with no decals. There are many options for painting a T-28 in Soviet or Finnish service. I would highly recommend doing some research and finding a paint and marking scheme that you like and going that route. A simple Google image search for “T-28 Soviet tank” will bring loads of data. And isn’t that half the fun?

Overall this is an excellent kit that does not pretend to be something it’s not by hiding behind flashy packaging or an exorbitant price. It brings something to the table for everyone, from the casual modeler who wants to use his fundamental skills and still come out with a nice kit to show off at the monthly model club meeting to the modeler with chronic AMS and the thousand yard stare who counts rivets in his sleep.

Nakajima Type 97 B5N2

When it entered service in 1937 the Nakajima Type 97 B5N was a quantum leap over the obsolete biplanes in use by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Though the B5N2 was faster and more capable than contemporary Allied torpedo bombers like the TBD Devastator and Fairey Swordfish, it was nearing obsolescence by 1941. Nevertheless, B5Ns (code named “Kate” in 1942 by the allies) flown by well-trained aircrews achieved significant successes at the battles of Pearl Harbour, Coral Sea, Midway, and Santa Cruz Islands. B5Ns were instrumental in the sinking of four US carriers (Lexington, Wasp, Hornet and Yorktown) early in the war.

The only known photo of of torpedo carrying B5N2s during the Pearl Harbor attack.

This B5N2 Kate is the aircraft flown by Lt.jg Jinichi Goto during the attack on Pearl Harbour. Goto commanded the second echelon of torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier Akagi. His torpedo hit the USS Oklahoma during the first minutes of the attack.

At 7:58 am on the day of the attack, as Goto flew low over the Southeast Loch of Pearl Harbour, about 50 feet above the water, the clustered masts of the battlewagons filled his windscreen. "All I could see," he said, "was a forest of battleships. I could not tell which was the bow and which was the stern.

"I aimed at a central battleship, [the Oklahoma] and I was so carried away that all I could yell out was ‘fire’. I forgot to say ‘ready, fire,’ but the man who was supposed to pull the lever (to release the torpedo) did pull it.” After releasing it, "My observer reported a huge waterspout springing up.”

LT jg Jinichi Goto

While Goto was successful in launching his torpedo it was not his primary mission that morning. Had there been anti-torpedo nets in place around the battleships Goto and his two wingmen were to torpedo the nets then crash into them to clear the way for following planes to launch their torpedo attacks. Luckily for Goto and his crews no nets were in place on the morning of the attack.

First released in 2001 the re-released over the years, the B5N2 kit from Hasegawa is a gem. The only real flaws are several ejector pin marks in spots in the cockpit walls which are nigh impossible to remove. The bright side is that when the parts come together the pesky marks are not visible at all.

Speaking of the cockpit, it’s superb! The engineers at Hasegawa outdid themselves creating beautiful detail and ease of assembly. The cockpit is the focal point of almost every aircraft model and usually I find aftermarket photo etch or resin parts are necessary to create a “wow” cockpit. Not here. The only aftermarket parts that really benefitted this cockpit were the pilot and observer seats (with belts) and a few bits and bobs on the throttle quadrants. I painted the cockpit interior with Model Masters 2062 RAF Interior Green. I lightened this to scale with a judicious glaze of 2136 Gulf Armor Sand and followed up with a wash of 2040 Aircraft Interior Black. The tragedy of it all is that all that wonderful detail gets all but hidden in the depths of the fuselage. At least I know it’s there.

Going...

... going...

... gone!

The engraving and overall attention to detail is state of the art even though the kit is ten years old. The kit comes with options for flaps up or deployed which is a very nice touch. The fit overall is very good. There was a small exception in the area of the engine mount just forward of the cockpit but this was easily fixed with some gap filling cyano glue

The main landing gear wheels are slightly overscale. I opted to use a True Details resin set which added to the final scale look of the aircraft. This version of the Kate comes with the option to construct the kit with the wings folded. A photo etch fret comes with the kit to fill the empty wing ends. The parts are accurate but are very simplified. I added a second wing rib inside the open ends to give a more three dimentional look to the parts and added some details with .3mm solder wire, stretched sprue and Evergreen stock. At first glance the procedure for making the folded wing version seemed like it was going to be complicated and dodgy. In the end it was fairly simple and came off like a dream. I mixed my own “aotake”, the metallic blue colour used on Japanese aircraft, by mixing Testors 4658 Clear Blue, 4668 Clear Green and a touch of 4683 Chrome Yellow. I painted the interior wing surfaces with 1781 Aluminium first, then the “aotake” mix.

I painted the dorsal side with Model Master 2116 IJN Green. I post shaded this with the base heavily diluted with thinner plus an equal amount of 2136 US Army Sand. The kit instructions call for the underside to be natural metal. I wasn’t happy about this since I hate doing natural metal finishes. I don’t like them and they don’t like me. However, luckily for me the most recent scholarship seems to indicate that most B5Ns at Pearl Harbour were painted in the common IJN Gray Green color. I replicated this by mixing Model Master 2117 IJN Sky Gray with a touch of 2004 Skin Tone Shadow and 2091 Dunkelgrun RLM 82. The markings for Goto’s aircraft weren’t included in the kit per se, but the markings it came with were easily convertible. I masked the hi no maru national insignia, tail drift gauge lines, tail stripe and fuselage band before painting the base colors. With simple shapes like these I find it is almost always worth the extra effort to paint on any insignia and markings possible. Markings that are actually painted on almost always look better than a decal, no matter how “painted on” the decal “looks”. The kit decals that I did use (the tail numbers and large block numbers on the wing undersides) nestled down to the engraved detail nicely with Testors 2145 Decal Solvent Solution.

Everything masked and ready to paint.

Weathering was fairly simple. IJN aircraft at Pearl Harbor were well maintained so they didn’t display the rugged appearance that aircraft did later in the war. The Japanese air units had been rigorously training in the months leading up the operation however so some wear and tear would have shown on the planes. After giving the whole model a gloss coat of Future I gave it a wash with flat black acrylics mixed with flow enhancer. Once this was dry I used a Prismacolor metallic silver pencil to create judicious chips and wear areas.
The star of the build is the Type 91 aerial torpedo. The B5N kit I used is for a high level bomber so I pirated the torpedo parts from the Tamiya G4M Betty kit. It already had the wooden fin extensions so all I needed to do was fabricate the mounting rack and anti-sway struts. These were done with Evergreen stock and .3mm lead solder. I painted the torpedo with Model Masters 1781 Aluminium and 1780 Steel.

While not quite what I would call a “weekend build” this Hasegawa kit went together quickly. Had it not been for the added attention the folding wings required I would have been done in just a few evenings of work. The fine engineering made it a relaxing build and the fine detail made for a very satisfactory end product.