Churchill Mk. IV AVRE with Small Box Girder Assault Bridge Mk. II

[Jakko]

My Grant CDL isn’t finished yet, and my JPK 120 isn’t either, but they’re both being painted — oh, and there’s that upcoming group build that’s getting in the way too because of my own fault, but I want to introduce the model I’ll be building next already That will be this one I bought about two weeks ago:



AFV Club’s Churchill Mk. IV Assault Vehicle, Royal Engineers with Small Box Girder Assault Bridge Mk. II — AVRE with SBG for short

This is a big box, larger in all dimensions than a typical tank kit, and it’s stuffed full of sprues, to the extent that I couldn’t get them all back in properly even after taking them out of their plastic bags … It’s also fairly pricey: I paid €79.50 for it, but given what you get for that, I think it’s good value for money anyway. So let’s take a look at that.



(I pictured only two of the track sprues, but you get four.) The tracks are the heavy cast steel, also known as BTS, type. AFV Club also sells the other common type, if you want that instead — or you could trade with someone who has another of their kits with that type, of course Oddly, you get two spare tracks in soft plastic of the other type of track.

With all of this, you can build an AVRE (but not a regular Churchill, as it’s lacking the gun etc. for that). It’s basically what you also get in AFV Club’s other AVRE kits, though there are some differences depending on which exact one you buy. I noticed here that the turret shell has the ventilator dome on the left-hand side of the roof, while my previous one had it centred. The offset type is later.

But you also get this:



On the right is a sprue with the attachment lugs for the front of the tank and the winch for the engine deck, both of which are needed to carry the SBG. Add just those and you have how the tank would have looked right after laying its bridge; the winch would probably be removed soon after if the tank was to remain in action, but the lugs at the front would remain.

The sprue on the left has deep-wading gear, which is optional — would probably only need this for an AVRE in Normandy on D-Day or at Westkapelle on 1 November 1944. Or one on exercise in the UK, of course And you can use them for other types of Churchill too, so hopefully, AFV Club will also sell this sprue separately. The moulding of the deep-wading gear is pretty impressive:



The stacks are slide-moulded hollow all the way through, and they’re something like 4 or 5 cm tall. The only thing that’s missing is the waterproofing canvas — but someone gave me a scan of the manual for that

As for the bridge, you get another four sprues, all like this one:



To give you an idea of size here: after removing these from their plastic bags, I put them into an A4-size ziplock bag to keep them safe, and with all four in, I had to be careful closing it because it was somewhat tight. The whole bridge was about 10 m long in real life, so that’s about 28 cm in scale.

 

[Jim R]

That is a very comprehensive kit. AFV seem to have done it proud. Typical AFV - more than enough bits to keep an experienced modeller happy for quite a while.

 

[JR]

I'm in, looks a nice kit, sure you will produce a great model

 

[Steve-the-Duck]

So many track links... so many springs... You might never build another model!

 

[adt70hk]

Got to love a Churchill. My maternal grandfather was a tool maker at Vauxhall during the war...... Often wondered what he worked on not never gotv the chance to ask as he died when I was one or two.

 

[Valeron]

Looks comprehensive and a lot of work. I'm sure you'll do it proud.

 

[Ian M]

I have never built a Churchill so I will watch this with interest. Is the AFC kit any good.

 

[Neil Merryweather]

Yum yum can't wait

 

[Jakko]

That is a very comprehensive kit. AFV seem to have done it proud. Typical AFV - more than enough bits to keep an experienced modeller happy for quite a while.

It’s not a kit you’ll put together in a weekend, no. Well, you could, I guess, but … There are a lot of small parts that really add to the detail, and unlike (for example) some mainland Chinese manufacturers, AFV Club at least doesn’t seem to make them as separate parts just because they can be.

sure you will produce a great model

That’s the plan

So many track links... so many springs... You might never build another model!

It’s actually not that bad. The springs are easy enough, and I’ll only need to build about half of the track links because the tank will have the complete track covers on. Why build the top run if it can’t be seen at all?

Got to love a Churchill. My maternal grandfather was a tool maker at Vauxhall during the war...... Often wondered what he worked on not never gotv the chance to ask as he died when I was one or two.

For those that don’t know why Vauxhall is important here: it designed the Churchill to a specification from the General Staff of the British Army Chances are your grandfather did work on the Churchill, I suppose, then. One of my grandfathers only really began to talk about his experiences during the war in the last few years of his life, he was in one of the Dutch defensive lines in May 1940 and became a POW of the Germans.

Looks comprehensive and a lot of work.

AFV Club kits aren’t really a good choice for your first-ever military vehicle kit, no

I have never built a Churchill so I will watch this with interest. Is the AFC kit any good.

Very much so. Of course, there isn’t that much choice if you want a Churchill in 1:35 — the only alternative in plastic is the 1970s Tamiya Mk. VII that was good for its day but is left completely in the dust by AFV Club’s kits of the last 15 years or so.

Yum yum can't wait

Now, let’s do some RL background …

The Churchill, as mentioned above, was designed by Vauxhall Motors to GS specification No. A22, because there was a need for an infantry tank that was better than the Matilda and Valentine that had been used in the 1930s and early years of the Second World War. Work initially started on specification A20, by the shipbuilders Harland and Wolff, but this didn’t work out so it was revised to become specification A22 and given to Vauxhall instead. This was more successful and accepted into service as the Tank, Infantry, Mark IV (A22). It’s the Mk. IV because Matilda I was Tank, Infantry Mk. I, Matilda II was Tank, Infantry Mk. II and Valentine was Tank, Infantry Mk. III.
After (apparently) Winston Churchill complained that it was getting exceedingly hard to keep track of all these different tanks with very similar designations, nicknames were adopted, and the Tank, Infantry, Mk. IV was named Churchill. Not, as is usually assumed, after Winston Churchill but after his ancestor John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough — the one who built himself a modest house in the country. The tank went through a couple of initial versions that had all sorts of teething troubles before the properly capable Mks. III and IV came off the production lines. This, of course, leads to even more confusing designations: Tank, Infantry Mk. IV (A22) Churchill Mk. III, for example — or something like that, as depending on the source the order of these elements might change.



The main differences between these marks (of the tank itself) are that the Mk. I (photo above) had a cast turret with a 2-pounder (40 mm) gun and a Besa machine gun and also carried a 3-inch (76 mm) howitzer in the front of the hull. The Mk. II was similar but replaced the howitzer by a more sensible Besa machine gun. The Mk. III had an entirely new turret made from welded plates and was armed with a 6-pounder (57 mm) gun, while the Mk. IV was identical except for having a cast turret of different design than used in the Mks. I and II — basically the same as the Mk. III's, but cast rather than welded. Earlier tanks were also reworked to the latest standards, so you could have vehicles with a mix of features of different marks. Following on was the Mk. V, which is a Mk. IV with a 95 mm howitzer, and then came the Mk. VI that had a revised turret and was armed with the British 75 mm gun, which was basically a 6-pounder bored out to fire American 75 mm ammunition of the type used by the Sherman. The Mk. VII was then pretty much an update of the entire tank, reworking the hull (with thicker armour) and all kinds of other details, and Mk. VIII was the same but armed with a 95 mm howitzer. Then there are also the Mks. IX, X and XI, which are earlier tanks uparmoured to basically Mk. VII standards, but I’ve never been quite clear on which is which, let alone how to tell them apart … This, though, is a Mk. III:



Stepping back a bit, the 79th Armoured Division, which had been formed to operate all the “special” armoured vehicles for the D-Day invasion and after, soon settled on the Churchill as its main tank for conversion, because it had a relatively roomy hull, good cross-country capability, thick armour, and the great advantage of side doors that would allow the crew to more safely leave the vehicle under fire to perform combat engineering tasks. They converted Mk. III and IV tanks into the Assault Vehicle, Royal Engineers, or AVRE (commonly expanded to Armoured Vehicle, Royal Engineers, but that’s the postwar designation for the Centurion-based equivalent). This is one based on the Mk. IV:



This entailed adding brackets to the hull sides to which various equipment could be bolted, replacing the main gun by a 290 mm spigot mortar firing demolition charges out to about 80 m effective range, and replacing the hull machine gunner’s hatch by a small sliding one to allow for reloading the mortar. This is the mortar and, on the right, a projectile for it:



And how it was reloaded (photographed from the other side):



Among the tasks these vehicles were used for, was laying mats from a large roll supported on a frame over the front of the vehicle, pushing mine rollers, carrying fascines (large bundles of brushwood) for dropping into ditches or behind walls, and laying small box girder bridges. The latter was a standard British military bridge design, which was adapted for carrying on the tank by a few additions to the bridge and the tank.

 

[adt70hk]

It’s not a kit you’ll put together in a weekend, no. Well, you could, I guess, but … There are a lot of small parts that really add to the detail, and unlike (for example) some mainland Chinese manufacturers, AFV Club at least doesn’t seem to make them as separate parts just because they can be.


That’s the plan


It’s actually not that bad. The springs are easy enough, and I’ll only need to build about half of the track links because the tank will have the complete track covers on. Why build the top run if it can’t be seen at all?


For those that don’t know why Vauxhall is important here: it designed the Churchill to a specification from the General Staff of the British Army Chances are your grandfather did work on the Churchill, I suppose, then. One of my grandfathers only really began to talk about his experiences during the war in the last few years of his life, he was in one of the Dutch defensive lines in May 1940 and became a POW of the Germans.


AFV Club kits aren’t really a good choice for your first-ever military vehicle kit, no


Very much so. Of course, there isn’t that much choice if you want a Churchill in 1:35 — the only alternative in plastic is the 1970s Tamiya Mk. VII that was good for its day but is left completely in the dust by AFV Club’s kits of the last 15 years or so.




Now, let’s do some RL background …

The Churchill, as mentioned above, was designed by Vauxhall Motors to GS specification No. A22, because there was a need for an infantry tank that was better than the Matilda and Valentine that had been used in the 1930s and early years of the Second World War. Work initially started on specification A20, by the shipbuilders Harland and Wolff, but this didn’t work out so it was revised to become specification A22 and given to Vauxhall instead. This was more successful and accepted into service as the Tank, Infantry, Mark IV (A22). It’s the Mk. IV because Matilda I was Tank, Infantry Mk. I, Matilda II was Tank, Infantry Mk. II and Valentine was Tank, Infantry Mk. III.
After (apparently) Winston Churchill complained that it was getting exceedingly hard to keep track of all these different tanks with very similar designations, nicknames were adopted, and the Tank, Infantry, Mk. IV was named Churchill. Not, as is usually assumed, after Winston Churchill but after his ancestor John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough — the one who built himself a modest house in the country. The tank went through a couple of initial versions that had all sorts of teething troubles before the properly capable Mks. III and IV came off the production lines. This, of course, leads to even more confusing designations: Tank, Infantry Mk. IV (A22) Churchill Mk. III, for example — or something like that, as depending on the source the order of these elements might change.

View attachment 474782

The main differences between these marks (of the tank itself) are that the Mk. I (photo above) had a cast turret with a 2-pounder (40 mm) gun and a Besa machine gun and also carried a 3-inch (76 mm) howitzer in the front of the hull. The Mk. II was similar but replaced the howitzer by a more sensible Besa machine gun. The Mk. III had an entirely new turret made from welded plates and was armed with a 6-pounder (57 mm) gun, while the Mk. IV was identical except for having a cast turret of different design than used in the Mks. I and II — basically the same as the Mk. III's, but cast rather than welded. Earlier tanks were also reworked to the latest standards, so you could have vehicles with a mix of features of different marks. Following on was the Mk. V, which is a Mk. IV with a 95 mm howitzer, and then came the Mk. VI that had a revised turret and was armed with the British 75 mm gun, which was basically a 6-pounder bored out to fire American 75 mm ammunition of the type used by the Sherman. The Mk. VII was then pretty much an update of the entire tank, reworking the hull (with thicker armour) and all kinds of other details, and Mk. VIII was the same but armed with a 95 mm howitzer. Then there are also the Mks. IX, X and XI, which are earlier tanks uparmoured to basically Mk. VII standards, but I’ve never been quite clear on which is which, let alone how to tell them apart … This, though, is a Mk. III:

View attachment 474783

Stepping back a bit, the 79th Armoured Division, which had been formed to operate all the “special” armoured vehicles for the D-Day invasion and after, soon settled on the Churchill as its main tank for conversion, because it had a relatively roomy hull, good cross-country capability, thick armour, and the great advantage of side doors that would allow the crew to more safely leave the vehicle under fire to perform combat engineering tasks. They converted Mk. III and IV tanks into the Assault Vehicle, Royal Engineers, or AVRE (commonly expanded to Armoured Vehicle, Royal Engineers, but that’s the postwar designation for the Centurion-based equivalent). This is one based on the Mk. IV:

View attachment 474784

This entailed adding brackets to the hull sides to which various equipment could be bolted, replacing the main gun by a 290 mm spigot mortar firing demolition charges out to about 80 m effective range, and replacing the hull machine gunner’s hatch by a small sliding one to allow for reloading the mortar. This is the mortar and, on the right, a projectile for it:

View attachment 474785

And how it was reloaded (photographed from the other side):

View attachment 474786

Among the tasks these vehicles were used for, was laying mats from a large roll supported on a frame over the front of the vehicle, pushing mine rollers, carrying fascines (large bundles of brushwood) for dropping into ditches or behind walls, and laying small box girder bridges. The latter was a standard British military bridge design, which was adapted for carrying on the tank by a few additions to the bridge and the tank.

View attachment 474787View attachment 474788View attachment 474789

Jakko

Thanks as always for the background info....knew quite a bit of it but still good to have some gaps filled in.

Made the Matchbox AVRE with SBG bridge in my teens and then also did one of the PSC wargaming kits with a rudimentary white metal and resin conversion kit on my return to the hobby, far from perfect looked ok from a distance.

Will definitely be following this, as my wife bought me an AFV Club Mk III for our wedding anniversary last year and still have in mind your comments/advice on tackling the suspension.

Are you going to do this largely OOB or do you have some modifications planned?

Good luck with the build.

ATB

Andrew

EDIT: Had meant to say that it cannot have been easy for your grandfather being a POW and for what I assume must have been the rest of the war.

 

[Jack L]

It’s not a kit you’ll put together in a weekend, no. Well, you could, I guess, but … There are a lot of small parts that really add to the detail, and unlike (for example) some mainland Chinese manufacturers, AFV Club at least doesn’t seem to make them as separate parts just because they can be.


That’s the plan


It’s actually not that bad. The springs are easy enough, and I’ll only need to build about half of the track links because the tank will have the complete track covers on. Why build the top run if it can’t be seen at all?


For those that don’t know why Vauxhall is important here: it designed the Churchill to a specification from the General Staff of the British Army Chances are your grandfather did work on the Churchill, I suppose, then. One of my grandfathers only really began to talk about his experiences during the war in the last few years of his life, he was in one of the Dutch defensive lines in May 1940 and became a POW of the Germans.


AFV Club kits aren’t really a good choice for your first-ever military vehicle kit, no


Very much so. Of course, there isn’t that much choice if you want a Churchill in 1:35 — the only alternative in plastic is the 1970s Tamiya Mk. VII that was good for its day but is left completely in the dust by AFV Club’s kits of the last 15 years or so.




Now, let’s do some RL background …

The Churchill, as mentioned above, was designed by Vauxhall Motors to GS specification No. A22, because there was a need for an infantry tank that was better than the Matilda and Valentine that had been used in the 1930s and early years of the Second World War. Work initially started on specification A20, by the shipbuilders Harland and Wolff, but this didn’t work out so it was revised to become specification A22 and given to Vauxhall instead. This was more successful and accepted into service as the Tank, Infantry, Mark IV (A22). It’s the Mk. IV because Matilda I was Tank, Infantry Mk. I, Matilda II was Tank, Infantry Mk. II and Valentine was Tank, Infantry Mk. III.
After (apparently) Winston Churchill complained that it was getting exceedingly hard to keep track of all these different tanks with very similar designations, nicknames were adopted, and the Tank, Infantry, Mk. IV was named Churchill. Not, as is usually assumed, after Winston Churchill but after his ancestor John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough — the one who built himself a modest house in the country. The tank went through a couple of initial versions that had all sorts of teething troubles before the properly capable Mks. III and IV came off the production lines. This, of course, leads to even more confusing designations: Tank, Infantry Mk. IV (A22) Churchill Mk. III, for example — or something like that, as depending on the source the order of these elements might change.

View attachment 474782

The main differences between these marks (of the tank itself) are that the Mk. I (photo above) had a cast turret with a 2-pounder (40 mm) gun and a Besa machine gun and also carried a 3-inch (76 mm) howitzer in the front of the hull. The Mk. II was similar but replaced the howitzer by a more sensible Besa machine gun. The Mk. III had an entirely new turret made from welded plates and was armed with a 6-pounder (57 mm) gun, while the Mk. IV was identical except for having a cast turret of different design than used in the Mks. I and II — basically the same as the Mk. III's, but cast rather than welded. Earlier tanks were also reworked to the latest standards, so you could have vehicles with a mix of features of different marks. Following on was the Mk. V, which is a Mk. IV with a 95 mm howitzer, and then came the Mk. VI that had a revised turret and was armed with the British 75 mm gun, which was basically a 6-pounder bored out to fire American 75 mm ammunition of the type used by the Sherman. The Mk. VII was then pretty much an update of the entire tank, reworking the hull (with thicker armour) and all kinds of other details, and Mk. VIII was the same but armed with a 95 mm howitzer. Then there are also the Mks. IX, X and XI, which are earlier tanks uparmoured to basically Mk. VII standards, but I’ve never been quite clear on which is which, let alone how to tell them apart … This, though, is a Mk. III:

View attachment 474783

Stepping back a bit, the 79th Armoured Division, which had been formed to operate all the “special” armoured vehicles for the D-Day invasion and after, soon settled on the Churchill as its main tank for conversion, because it had a relatively roomy hull, good cross-country capability, thick armour, and the great advantage of side doors that would allow the crew to more safely leave the vehicle under fire to perform combat engineering tasks. They converted Mk. III and IV tanks into the Assault Vehicle, Royal Engineers, or AVRE (commonly expanded to Armoured Vehicle, Royal Engineers, but that’s the postwar designation for the Centurion-based equivalent). This is one based on the Mk. IV:

View attachment 474784

This entailed adding brackets to the hull sides to which various equipment could be bolted, replacing the main gun by a 290 mm spigot mortar firing demolition charges out to about 80 m effective range, and replacing the hull machine gunner’s hatch by a small sliding one to allow for reloading the mortar. This is the mortar and, on the right, a projectile for it:

View attachment 474785

And how it was reloaded (photographed from the other side):

View attachment 474786

Among the tasks these vehicles were used for, was laying mats from a large roll supported on a frame over the front of the vehicle, pushing mine rollers, carrying fascines (large bundles of brushwood) for dropping into ditches or behind walls, and laying small box girder bridges. The latter was a standard British military bridge design, which was adapted for carrying on the tank by a few additions to the bridge and the tank.

View attachment 474787View attachment 474788View attachment 474789

I Look forward to this one @Jakko . Always been fascinated by the AVRE, and had my eye on the AFV versions.I’m sure you will be making plenty of modifications. I had no idea the mortar was reloaded shotgun style, I thought it was a muzzle loader.

 

[scottie3158]

Jakko, chair at the front please will definitely being following along.

 

[Jakko]

Thanks as always for the background info....knew quite a bit of it but still good to have some gaps filled in.

Cool, I didn’t type it all for nothing, then A bit more to follow below, so keep reading …

Made the Matchbox AVRE with SBG bridge in my teens

Heh, same, though I never finished it because of the difficulty of brush-painting that bridge … I do have a Revell boxing of it in my stash, though, that I bought a few years ago. The bridge is good, the hull is decent, but the turret is very much too small.

and then also did one of the PSC wargaming kits with a rudimentary white metal and resin conversion kit on my return to the hobby, far from perfect looked ok from a distance.

Will definitely be following this, as my wife bought me an AFV Club Mk III for our wedding anniversary last year and still have in mind your comments/advice on tackling the suspension.

I’m almost certainly going to show that again, now with some modifications to account for the weight of the bridge, though. Apparently it put enough strain on the front wheels that it caused burned-out bearings if the bridge was carried for too long.

Are you going to do this largely OOB or do you have some modifications planned?

This will become a specific vehicle, though it won’t need that much adaptation as far as I can see at the moment.

EDIT: Had meant to say that it cannot have been easy for your grandfather being a POW and for what I assume must have been the rest of the war.

Dutch POWs were lucky: as a gesture of goodwill towards a “fellow Germanic people”, they were released starting on 5 June 1940 (the invasion began on 10 May), on the main conditions that they would return to civilian life and not take up arms. However, he did spend several days in a baggage or animal car (or something like that) on a train before being let out into an empty field with barbed wire around it, where he then spent the next couple of weeks, as I recall from what he told me offhand one day (I had just returned from a vacation in Germany, where I had gone by train; when I told him, he replied, “I went to Germany by train once too” …)

Always been fascinated by the AVRE, and had my eye on the AFV versions.I’m sure you will be making plenty of modifications.

I kind of hope not, I could do with a model that doesn’t need a lot of work

I had no idea the mortar was reloaded shotgun style, I thought it was a muzzle loader.

So did I until some years ago, when I first began to seriously look into the AVRE. It’s clear it can’t be reloaded from inside of the turret, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the barrel might pivot upward for loading.

chair at the front please will definitely being following along.

Cool, I hope you won’t be disappointed


The Real Thing

As I alluded to earlier, the AVRE with SBG was used at Westkapelle, Netherlands, in Operation Infatuate II on 1 November 1944. This, you may just already be aware if you’re been on this forum for a while, kind of holds my interest — not in the least because my grandparents on the other side lived there all their life. Well, except for the time around that landing, because you couldn’t. Here’s the village in June 1944 (north is at the top of the photo, more or less):

(source)

3 October 1944, ca 16:00 and 17:00 hrs:

(source)

Early morning of 1 November 1944, some way out to sea:



The landing craft visible are all of the LCT (4) type (Landing Craft, Tank, Mark 4). The two nearest to the one carrying the photographer (actually: film cameraman) are both carrying an AVRE with an SBG bridge, which sticks up quite a bit above the vessel. In all, four LCTs carried a total of twenty tanks to Westkapelle, one AVRE with bridge in each. Probably, the two visible in the photo above are LCTs 650 and 737 (the one carrying the cameraman was 789), but this isn’t entirely certain because I don’t think there are pictures that actually show their numbers.

The landing force included bridge carriers because the Germans had built an antitank wall on the inside of the sea dyke: its foot had been dug away and a vertical concrete wall built so that there was a sheer drop on the inside of the dyke, preventing vehicles from getting down except at a few sites where a road lead up onto the dyke. The bridges were intended to be laid from the top of the wall down to normal ground level, creating exit points for the tanks. Two other AVREs carried fascines for much the same purpose: drop them off the top of the wall so that a tank could drive down/have a cushioned landing.

LCT 650 and 737 as well as 1005 discharged their vehicles ashore mostly successfully; the fourth, LCT 513, had to turn back after being hit by severe German fire which among other damage, set the fascine alight. As the bridge of the AVRE in 650 was hit and collapsed, only two AVREs with their bridges actually made it to the landing beach — which was immediately to the north of the gap bombed into the sea dyke, that you can see in the “double” aerial photo above. This was not the intended landing point: that was the revetted part of the dyke further north, but German fire was intense and the north side of the gap itself was out of reach of the heavier guns, so that site was picked instead.

LCT 737 was the first to actually land, and the first tank ashore was probably an AVRE without bridge:



You can clearly see here that the SBG sticks up far above the craft, obviously meaning that the bridge-carrier was still on board. Also still on board at that time were these two:



This is probably the best-known photo of this landing, and the front one of the two Sherman Crabs is usually assumed to be this one, but it isn’t Again, the SBG carrier is obviously still inside the LCT.

Unfortunately, I know of no photographs that show it coming out, or doing anything else during the war. However, it is clear that it laid its bridge on the beach. The reason for this is that the beach area — actually the remains of the bombed dyke, of course — was so soft and littered with basalt blocks (that originally formed the outer face of the dyke on the seaward side) that most of the tanks got stuck very quickly after driving off the LCT’s ramp. It is known that the bridge-carrying AVRE in LCT 1005 dropped its bridge from the end of the ramp, after three tanks that left the craft before it had all bogged down, then drove over it itself — and got stuck too as soon as it was completely off it …

I haven’t seen any documentation that the AVRE in LCT 737 did the same, but there is this photo from 1945:



At the bottom of the photo is an SBG bridge; lying half off it is a Churchill AVRE, which was the fascine carrier from LCT 1005 — because that found it couldn’t go forward because the bridge-carrier bogged down right in front of it and couldn’t go rearward because the LCT backed away as soon as the fascine-carrier was off the ramp … it ended up falling off the bridge and getting stuck. In the background, though, is another SBG bridge, and since only two bridge carriers landed with their bridges, that must be the one from LCT 737. Here’s another view of it:



The Sherman Crab is the same one as in the previous photo.

(Quick plug: for those wanting more information on all of this, I would recommend my own book, Tanks at Westkapelle, copies of which are still available and support Westkapelle’s local museum )

All of this leads us to that I will be building a model of the AVRE with SBG carried in LCT 737:



This had War Department census number T68927 and callsign A2A, belonging to 2 Platoon, 87 Assault Squadron, Royal Engineers. Its crew was Capt. Watling, LCpls Knaust and Stuart, and Tps Chesworth, Jackson and Rennie. The tank didn’t bog down on the beach with most of the rest of the landing force (only four tanks out of fourteen actually landed made if off the beach) but after the war, stood some way up the beach from the others, and facing towards the sea rather than away from it. It must have gotten bogged down or suffered a breakdown of some kind, though, else it wouldn’t have been left there without taking part in the fighting.

Not as a wreck as in this photos, but as it would have appeared while carried in the LCT, before dropping its bridge.

 

[Mickc1440]

Good luck with the build

 

[Steve-the-Duck]

Well, there's a concise and comprehensive history of the Churchill if ever I've read one
Which I have
A lot.

And still there's never QUITE a definitive description of what exactly the MkII was. I prefer yours rather than the alternative 'they swapped the guns around'

 

[Jakko]

Well, there's a concise and comprehensive history of the Churchill if ever I've read one
Which I have
A lot.

Probably more than I have, then

And still there's never QUITE a definitive description of what exactly the MkII was. I prefer yours rather than the alternative 'they swapped the guns around'

Yes, that’s what I thought I remembered too, but one of the books I looked in to write the above, mentioned the Besa replacing the howitzer, so I went with that.

Edit, the next day: later yesterday night, I was looking through the book The Churchill Tank by Chris Ellis (Tanks Illustrated No. 23; Poole: Arms and Armour Press, 1987), and on page 11, I came across this photo:



That neatly explains that: the normal Mk. II had a Besa in the hull, but the Mk II CS had a 2-pounder there and a 3-inch howitzer in the turret, effectively making it a reverse of the Mk. I.

 

[Scratchbuilder]

Hello Jakko,
Thanks for the intro to this new model. I have one on back order from the 'Scale Model Shop' and will get to it as soon as it finally arrives.
I scratch built one of these way back in 1978 using the then 'new' Tamiya Churchill where it was put into print for the long deceased MM magazine.
So will now draw up a chair and take notes on how you progress, as at the moment that is all I can do (see AVLB build).
Cheers
Mike.

 

[Jakko]

I’m impressed so far, despite not having started building yet Having made one of AFV Club’s AVRE kits previously, I know how good they are, of course, and I’m pretty impressed by the bridge parts. I think that will actually be the first thing I’m going to build, because it will be necessary to have at hand in order to know how much weight to put into the model. (The instructions recommend 100 grammes, but that seems a lot and a rather nice, round figure to me.)

 

[Si Benson]

An interesting build out of the norm.l..and what’s not to like about AVRE!
Looking forward to seeing this go together

 

[Scratchbuilder]

Jakko,
Be carefull of the weight, on my first build I used the steel weights from one of those tv top aerial things, I think they came with three legs on the stand, and even then it was just on the right side of balanced... Here is a pic of my AFV Club AVRE that I was going to use to scratch another bridge untill I saw this kit.

Sorry it is blurred, but the total weight is 298g with the balance weight inside, which are flat metal plates (ebay) fitted inside a plasticard box. Hope this helps with the weight problem.
Cheers. Mike.