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military-vehicles.html
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---
layout: build-collection
icon_small: "https://combo.staticflickr.com/pw/images/collection_default_s.gif"
id: "198063996-72157721652476868"
label: militaryvehicles
title: "Military Vehicles"
---
Armour modelling has been the most prolific of the modeling genres I have been involved in. Although I started with ships, and armour came 7 years later, I have finished 70 models of military vehicles compared with 52 ships, 43 aircraft and 24 cars & trucks. When I fall into a modeling slump, starting a military vehicle is always the pathway out.
I started armour modelling in 1969 at a time when I needed a distraction from a difficult last year at school. I had not done any modelling for over two and a half years and when I saw some cheap little RSL Classic armour kits in a stationery shop in Royal Oak, I thought I would give them a go. In 1969 I ended up building 6 of these little 1/87 kits which were actually reboxed Roco Minitanks models. I started with an M-40 155 mm SP gun (Model 18) and worked my way through a couple of GMC 6X6 trucks, an Honest John missile launcher truck, a Puma armoured car and a German SP 88 mm AA gun. One of the GMC trucks still exists (Model 20) and is my oldest extant model, from 54 years ago.
The ex-Roco 1/87 scale vehicles were very simplified and later in 1969 I made the transition to Airfix kits, initially the Bloodhound missile set at 1/72 scale and then a series of their 1/76 scale tanks, starting with the Churchill in 1970. I followed on with a Panther, Bren Carrier, Sherman, T-34 and WW1 Mk.1 by which time it was early 1971. I was assembling and painting these models quite carefully and from the Sherman onwards, I started making minor improvements such as drilling out gun barrels. If I remember correctly, I was influenced by a friend from my school days who was making dozens of Airfix Shermans and modifying them into different versions.
It was in 1971 that I first encountered 1/35 scale tanks and that changed everything. I was immediately drawn to the bigger scale and I started buying Tamiya kits initially and then also some by Nichimo. The first one I bought was Tamiya’s T34/85 in 1971 (Model 50) though the first I really started was Tamiya’s M4A3E8 in 1972 (Model 78). I started a total of ten 1/35 scale armour models between 1972 and 1975, finished 7 of them between 1976 and 1993, and abandoned the other 3. All of these were the old-style motorised tanks with rubber band tracks. It took an age to clear my backlog of these as I had very limited modeling time for 15 years from the mid 70s till the end of the 80s.
In the early to mid 70s, I also had a fringe involvement with 1/48 scale armour, starting with Tamiya’s M-60 which I bought in 1972. I started it in 1974 and then finished in 1981 (Model 51). When Bandai introduced their excellent range of 1/48 static armour models in the early 70s, I went ahead and collected over 30 of them between 1974 and 1976. I ended up building only one, the Kublewagen (Model 48) and I sold all the rest in a huge collection purge in the mid 1990s. I decided I didn’t need 1/48 armour as well as 1/35 and 1/72 scales.
From 1976, starting with the 1/35 M-8 armoured car (Model 44), I started to make more significant improvements to my armour models. I bought and used reference material as a guide to adding details and making corrections using plastic card, rod and stretched sprue. I still have an almost complete set of the original AFV Profiles from that era. In 1978 I started dry-brushing to highlight detail and in 1980 I first used dark washes for shading. By end 1982, I had finished 5 of the 1/35 models, the last being a Nichimo Panzer IV F2 (Model 52). By 1989 I had made progress on 2 others an SU-100 (Model 65) and a Tamiya T-55 which I subsequently abandoned.
In 1985 I started a couple more Roco 1/87 vehicles – I still don’t understand why I took this regressive step. Then, in 1987, I was given a big collection of built, scratchbuilt and partly-built armour models, mainly 1/76 but also a few in 1/35 scale armour by a former German soldier who had served in the Afrika Korps. I felt obligated to finish off some of the models he had given me when I returned to New Zealand in 1988.
Once I was fully re-established back in New Zealand by late 1989, I was determined to get my modeling going at a higher level than ever before and to finish off the backlog of partly-finished projects I had been carting around with me from house to house, city to city and country to country - some of them since 1970. Nine of the backlog items were armour models and by the end of 1991 I had finished off 5 of these and abandoned 2. I also started and finished 4 new builds, 2 of which were resin kits. In 1993, I finally finished the last of the old rubber-band tanks, Tamiya’s 1/35 M4A3E8 Sherman (Model 78). From the mid 1980s and during this productive period in the early 1990s, I had been upgrading my skills and techniques – the work on the SU-100 in particular had forced me into making RTV moulds and resin casting, scratchbuilding complicated shapes and using other materials such as brass, tissue soaked in PVA glue etc.
In 1994-95, I had to work out of town on contract and commute back home to Wellington for weekends. I set up a temporary modelling area in my rental house in New Plymouth and rebuilt 4 of the semi-built 1/76 scale kits I had been given in 1987. These projects were intended to stop boredom creeping in during the evenings away from home but unfortunately most of them did not turn out very well, the Elefant (Model 82) being the only exception. My heart wasn’t really in these projects and it was reflected in the results. The net consequence was that I swore off small-scale armour and didn’t come back to it for 19 years.
I continued with 1/35 scale armour through the rest of the 1990s and into the 2000s. In 1999, I made my best tank to that date, a Soviet IS-3 (Model 92). I subsequently placed it on a scenic base and painted a resin figure to complete the picture. The IS-3 marked another turning point in my armour modelling in that for the first time I used a lot of aftermarket parts to super-detail the model. Other than a false start on a German 8-wheel armoured car kit in 2002, I did no armour modelling until 2005-06 when I built an eastern European kit of an IT-28 bridgelayer tank (Model 115). It turned out to be a huge exercise in parts cleanup and an experiment with different types of paint. Then, between 2010 and 2012, I had a burst of productivity with 1/35 armour and completed 3 new models, all to a similar standard as the IS-3. I had finally reached a standard that I was comfortable with. The IJA Type 89 tank (Model 144) was well received by other modelers but the Sd.Kfz 232 (Model 146) which I had started in 2002, was the one that I was most happy about.
The next step in my modeling of militaria started in late 2013 when I became motivated by nostalgia for models I had built in 1969-72. I decided to build new models of all the old military subjects, to a constant 1/72 scale. This was a major reversal of the conclusion I had reached 19 years before, to abandon small-scale armour. I pressed ahead and built 16 new 1/72 scale (and a few 1/76) models in 2014-15. They were generally to a much higher standard than the small scale tanks I had built in the early to mid 90s. With these new models, I used aftermarket parts, particularly turned metal barrels, and also took much greater care with paint schemes and overall authenticity. In my opinion, the pick of these models are the Puma (M172), Panzer 3 (M175), Panther (M173), T-34 (M174), Sherman Firefly (M176), Churchill III (M181), GMC Truck (M177) and Universal Carrier (M180).
After completing enough 1/72 models to fill a shelf of a small display cabinet , I turned my attention back to 1/35 scale and from 2015 to 2016 I built five of the best models I have made in the big scale. They are all on scenic bases and have one or more figures. The best of these are probably the T-72 (M184) and the Sherman (M185). I researched all these subjects in depth and went to some trouble to improve the accuracy of the kits with aftermarket parts . Since then, from 2018 to 2023, I have built 4 more 1/35 military vehicles and have attempted to maintain the standard I set in 2015. The most recent of the new builds is a 3D-printed kit I bought on Ebay.
At the time of writing, I have two other 1/35 scale models underway, a Tamiya Quad gun tractor towing a 25-pdr and a resin kit of a giant Kirovets farm tractor.