Jakko’s 1:35 Sherman Crab Mk. I — seeing double?

[Jakko]

It dawned on me a while ago that my Brewster 339 doesn’t really follow the spirit of this group build: yes, it’s known as a Buffalo, but only in British service, really. Mine will be an ML-KNIL (Military Aviation of the Royal Netherlands-Indian Army) machine, though, and pilots and crews knew the plane as a “Brewster” there, not as a “Buffalo”.

So what to do to build something that does fit, and also fits my interests? After considering several options, I eventually decided on these models that I’ve been intending to make for about a year and a half:



Yes, not one, but two Sherman Crabs. Or, more precisely, one Sherman Crab, “before” and “after”. Or perhaps even more accurately: “after” and “long after” — read on (What’s the M36 for? Like I said: read on!)

This is going to be a historically accurate build, to be precise this particular tank:



That’s a Sherman Crab Mk. I, War Department number T148656, photographed in the immediate post-war period (probably 1946, if I had to guess) in the Zuidstraat in Westkapelle, Netherlands. It’s one of several tanks (two Sherman Mk. Vs, three Crab Mk. Is and a Churchill Mk. IV AVRE) left in that street after the Allied landings on 1 November 1944, as they had been parked for the night but were swamped by sea water during high tide and inoperable the next morning. I’ll supply a bit more history later, in a follow-on post.

The spot the tank was left looks like this today:



(The buildings in the 1940s photo were demolished a few years later to make way for a market square.) Explore for yourself — the house directly behind the camera if you follow that link, is where the 1940s photo was taken from, through a small window in the roof.

But why two kits? Won’t one do? Do you need parts from both?

Yes, I do, because I intend to build the tank not only as it appeared in the 1940s, but also as it does today:



This is the same tank, minus pretty much all of its Crab fittings and plus a number of sheet metal bits and other alterations to restore it to presentable condition. The reasons for these I’ll explain in a later post, as some of it’s quite a convoluted story that I was only able to piece together from old newspaper articles. It stands as a monument on the sea dyke at Westkapelle, and is known in the village simply as “the tank”.

At the foot of the dyke is the village museum, which naturally has a large part devoted to the war. When I was taking pictures of it to build an accurate model earlier this year, the museum’s manager told me a funny anecdote: he was on holiday in Greece a few years ago, and someone asked him where he was from. “The Netherlands, a place called Westkapelle,” he replied. “Ah, with the tank!” the Greek man exclaimed. It turned out the man had been a sailor, and had often come past there on the way to and from Antwerp, with the tank being a clear indicator to everyone of where they were in the world

The almost-new version of the tank will be built from the Asuka kit and most of the accessories shown, including interior parts from the Academy M36. The monument version will come from the Dragon kit, plus one of the track sets to get the correct ones for the tank as it appears today.

 

[Jakko]

Here’s what I’ve got collected to build these models. Let’s start with the complete tank:



This is a shot into the opened Asuka box. It contains a lot of relatively small sprues, probably because Asuka make a lot of Sherman kits and so they likely chose to make their tooling highly modular, letting them include sprues with relevant parts in many different kits without too much duplication or spares. The kit also includes a fairly extensive set of photoetched parts, including for the brackets over the lights and the plates that the sand shields attach to.

Here are the main conversion parts, Resicast’s Crab Mk. I set:



It contains everything needed to convert a Sherman into a Crab, but unfortunately for me, it’s the wrong subtype. “Everyone” knows there were two Crab versions, the Mk. I and Mk. II, the main difference being that the Mk. II had an automatic levelling mechanism that saw a counterweight added and a hydraulic cylinder removed from the flail arm system. However, there were subvariants of the Mk. I as well, differing in the style and types of racks on the sides of the hull, and with or without racks for spare flails on the turret front. Our subject had a closed bin on the right and a tubular frame on the left of the hull plus brackets for flails on the turret, none of which are in the Resicast set. But it’s nothing that can’t be scratchbuilt by an average modeller, so no problem — all I need to do is work out their dimensions

Since the tank had deep-wading gear, I also needed a set of that, also from Resicast:



The turret hatch will be open, affording a view of the gun breech, so I decided to splash out on a Resicast 75 mm gun:



I’m not sure yet if I’ll also use the mantlet (the wide one) or one of the canvas-covered ones from the Crab conversion set or the deep-wading set, though.

The bit at top left is the engine compartment firewall from Resicast’s M4A4 engine set, which I used on my previous Westkapelle Sherman. This isn’t part of the gun set, but the open turret hatch will afford a view of the firewall as well, and Resicast’s is well-detailed on this side as well as the back.

Then there’s a sprue from the Academy M36 with (mainly) interior parts:



This is needed because one of the front hatches will also be open, as you can see in the 1940s photo above, and this gives a very clear view into the tank of the seats, transmission and floor. I could have bought these in resin, but that costs as much as an M36 kit that has the parts as well, and now I can still build an M36 with the front hatches closed so the lack of an interior there won’t be obvious.

And it needs tracks too, of course:



Asuka includes T62 tracks, which have a metal “wave” chevron with three rivet heads on each link, while the real tank had T48 tracks that have a rubber V-shaped chevron. Panda Models sells these, fortunately.

The monument tank will be built from a Dragon M4A4:



This is actually a reissue kit that includes a set of four US Marines figures, which I didn’t include in the photo because I obviously won’t need them. In fact, I won’t need a lot of the parts in the picture, as this model will probably consist of the hull, turret and suspension with very few detail parts plus a scratchbuilt engine deck (it’s just some sheet steel on the real thing). It also needs new tracks, again from Panda:



As I said, originally it had rubber chevron T48 tracks, but a restoration about 25 years ago saw them replaced by T54E1 metal chevron type.

 

[Graeme C.]

Looks an interesting project Jakko, before & after builds.

 

[Steve Jones]

That lot will keep you out of trouble for a while . Good luck with the project

 

[Jakko]

The plan is to get the Brewster to the painting stage and then begin building both of these at once … yes, ambitious, and I’m sure it’s going to come back to bite me

Some more history before I get to actually building these models, for those interested in such things I’ve built a couple of models of tanks in Westkapelle previously and posted about them here on the forum: the Churchill AVRE and one of the Sherman Vs. I’ll refer you to those for a short history of why there were six tanks in a village high street, or this e-book for a short overview of the whole operation.

To first put its location into perspective, if you look at the AVRE thread, you’ll see a photo of a street there, where the AVRE stood in front of what is now a Chinese restaurant:



The photo I posted of the modern-day location of the Crab is in the distance here, a little beyond where the road surface changes from red bricks to brown. The tank was on the left of the street, with a second Crab almost right behind it and a third across the street, all facing the camera. The Sherman V I built stood on the left just in front of that colour change, facing away from the camera, where the outdoor seating is now, and a second one was on the opposite side of the street facing to the camera as well.

The tank this build is about, T148656, belonged to ‘A’ Squadron, 1st Lothians and Border Horse, 30th Armoured Brigade, 79th Armoured Division, and came ashore from LCT 650, which was assigned No. 6 in the operation and codenamed “Cherry” — all tanks carried in it had that name and number roughly painted on the front and back. That would have looked like this:



This, though, is not T148656 — this is Dandy Dinmont, AKA Meg (WD number unknown). It was the platoon commander’s tank of 1st Platoon of ‘A’ Squadron, disembarking here from LCT 737 (No. 5/“Bramble”), which ended up directly behind our subject in the street.

Immediately after the fighting in the village, T148656 stood elsewhere in the Zuidstraat:



This photo is much further along to the back in the colour picture above, actually out of sight because of the way the street curves to the left a bit. The tank is also on the other side of the street, as it’s facing in the same direction as in the first picture I posted of it above.

You can see the bin on the right side of the hull here, and also the stowage racks for spare flail chains on the turret front. My guess is the soldiers are a recovery crew, given that there seem to be tow cables hooked up to the tank, and so that this was taken when the tank was about to be towed to the spot pictured earlier, where it would stand for several years.

On 15 May 1945, the tank was temporarily repurposed:



This because turning just to the right, the scene was this:



The woman in the centre of the photo, in the dark clothes with her back to the camera, is (then-)Princess Juliana, giving toys to local children. In the left background, Dandy Dinmont is also being used as a spectator stand, while in the right background, the third Crab (WD number unknown) is as well.

Incidentally, I would love to build the tank with all those people on it, but I’m just not going to even try

Another view of T148656 in more usual circumstances (with Dandy Dinmont visible behind it again):



A few years later, things got interesting:



All the tanks were eventually towed away from where they had stood. This because the wrecks were obviously in the way, and all had been purchased by a scrap metal dealer from the nearby town of Middelburg, N.V. M.L. Polak en Zoon. However, he didn’t actually begin scrapping the tanks yet — T148656 ended up in a field next to the local war museum, which had been opened in a former German M162a observation bunker:



From here on, its story began to resemble a soap opera Polak was informed by the provincial war museum in Middelburg (not that in Westkapelle, which considered itself a branch of that in Middelburg — a feeling that was not shared by the Middelburg museum, by the way …) that the tank had supposedly been donated to the museum by Field Marshal Montgomery himself. Inquiries about this were made to the Dutch national government, which informed them that the wrecks were not Montgomery’s to give away, regardless of whether he actually had or not. After talks, Polak decided to donate the tank to the museum.

In 1955, the museum didn’t want the tank anymore because it was in the way and they really didn’t know what to do with it. Polak offered 2000 guilders for it (about 7000 euros in today’s money) and so purchased it back, again with the intention of turning it into scrap metal, of course.

Three years later, his men finally got round to doing this, but when they began to cut up the tank, local police stopped them. This time, a local foundation, Westkapelle Herrijst (“Westkapelle Rises Again”) claimed ownership — Polak on his part claimed to never even have heard of them, and considered the tank his property.

By this time, T148656 looked like this:



The matter eventually ended up in court, where the judge decided in July of 1960 that the tank belonged to the foundation. Polak appealed, probably on the grounds that he paid a good deal of money for it, and this time, the decision went the other way, the judge requiring the foundation to pay damages to Polak if it didn’t turn over ownership of the tank to him. By November, the two parties had reached an agreement: Polak owned the tank, but he would allow the town council of Westkapelle to use it as a monument, on the conditions that it would be in place before 1962 and that the council would keep it in good repair — failing to do either meant ownership would revert to Polak.

The council made good on its side of the deal:



The tank was placed on the sea dyke, behind memorial stones that were already in place at the time. In the picture above it’s in pretty poor state, but it was soon repaired to much more presentable condition. By the 1970s, it looked like this:



At this point, the tank was hardly recognisable as a Crab anymore — only the metalwork on the front superstructure sides gives it away, if you know that these are the attachment points for the flail arms. The vertical plate covers the hole for the drive shaft to the flail system and is obviously an addition to make the tank presentable. The engine deck was a couple of steel plates, but the tank appears to have been in decent enough condition. It often served as a climbing frame for children, both local and tourists — including me at times, since my grandfather lived at the foot of the dyke in one of the houses visible in the distance.

In the mid-1980s, the dyke was strengthened by making it wider and higher. This meant the tank was temporarily moved to another spot, where it clearly kept its secondary function:



It was also in fairly poor state by now, as you can see in the photo: it’s quite rusted.

A few years later, when the works on the dyke had been completed, the tank was fixed up and replaced as close to its original spot as possible, with the same stones in front of it but a larger brick pedestal underneath. It was then removed again around 1994 for a thorough overhaul, which saw most rusted-away parts replaced, including the fake engine deck and the tracks.

By 2019, T148656 looked like this:



It has slowly fallen into disrepair over the years, though. The whole thing is rusted and, if I were Polak (and still alive), I would claim the council hasn’t kept up its side of the deal. I mean, look at this:



Or even better:



There should be a round shield there, for the bow machine gun. Last year, someone brought it into the museum (at the foot of the dyke) and said it had fallen off the tank … When the museum contacted the council about this, the reply was, “We thought that tank was yours …” WTF?!

The tank is now part of a larger monument. The stones at the front look like this:



Stairs, known as the “Liberty Bridge”, connect the museum’s garden to the tank:



The platform built into the dyke, towards the top, has stones all around bearing the names of the Allied troops who died during the liberation of Westkapelle.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Most interesting. Appreciate all the background info. It will be an great project. You seem to have sourced all the parts you need and have a plan of action.
Jim

 

[Jakko]

Now I finally finished the Brewster, I can start these (I told myself to finish the other one first, else neither would ever get done, probably). As I said above, I’ll be building the two models simultaneously, and here’s the start of them:



These are, obviously, the lower hulls — Asuka in front (green plastic), Dragon behind (grey plastic). The former will become the 1940s tank, the latter the 2019 monument.

An immediate difference between the two kits is that Dragon’s lower hull comes in a single piece (plus rear plate that I haven’t fitted yet) whereas Asuka’s is built up from five pieces excluding firewall and rear plate. The Asuka kit includes that firewall, but I installed it into Dragon’s hull because the monument tank will have a small hole in the turret roof through which it may be visible. I had to add shims along the sides to make it fit tightly, and added some square plastic rod behind it to keep it in place. Amazingly, the hull top fits over it perfectly, no trimming down required at all.

On the other hand, the 1940s tank will have the commander’s hatch wide open, affording a relatively good view of the firewall, so I put a Resicast piece in instead. This came from their M4A4 engine kit I used on my earlier Sherman V, where I hadn’t used it because it wouldn’t be visible anyway. I also added thin (0.25 mm) plastic card to both hull side plates to disguise the moulded-in recesses behind where the suspension brackets fit on the outside. I put hex nuts on the inside to correspond to those outside, but at the front left only. The other three in the crew compartment will be pretty much or entirely invisible when the model is finished, so no point in putting them there too.

 

[Si Benson]

Interesting story behind the tank...look forward to the builds

 

[Jakko]

In that case, allow me to continue

I began work on the interior of the abandoned tank, using the Academy M36 floor and transmission. I had to cut some bits out of the rear end and file down the sides of the vertical part (the rear face of the final drive unit) to get it to fit correctly against the Resicast firewall and between sides of the Asuka final drive housing:



When trying to get all that together, I also discovered that I needed to remove a bit of the plastic card side walls, else the final drive housing wouldn’t fit onto the hull. However, all that done, everything fits well enough:



Naturally, this still needs the transmission, seats, etc. added as well as assorted stuff on the floor behind the seats and other details and minor changes.

Since I was building the Asuka final drive, I thought I’d also put together the Dragon one. That lead to problem No. 1 with this kit:



You look at the instructions, then the sprue, and think, “Part 12? It’s marked 27 …” until you look more closely and find that typical Dragon trait of providing multiple parts for the same thing, one improved over the other: C11 and C27 are flanges with bolt heads, and H11 and H12 are better versions of the same. Not that they fit overly well, I needed to carefully bend them open to fit more or less correctly around the housing. They’re also in one piece while Asuka provides them as two halves so you get the seam running between them like on the real tank.

The sides also fit poorly, and even holding it up to the hull doesn’t really tell you how it’s supposed to fit Not to mention I had to drill out the moulded-on towing eyes. On the whole, I much prefer the Asuka part, as it’s not only easier to build but much better detailed. See for yourself:



Then on to the rear plate of the monument tank. Another oddity about the Dragon kit came up here. The instructions tell you to use part H18, which is on a sprue marked “Firefly” and so thus probably comes from their Sherman VC kit. As such, it has a lot of British additions moulded on that I thought I’d have to remove. However, the kit also includes part A22 (on the smaller of the two “A” sprues, the one with the upper and lower hull parts) which is the basic M4A4 rear hull plate without all that stuff on it. It’s very strange they tell you to use H18 because the kit I bought represents an American tank in the Pacific, which would have had the plain rear plate and decidedly not one with British fittings on it.

Anyway, all I had to do was scrape away some locating lines for parts I didn’t need and replace the strip moulded over the doors by a new one to replicate the real tank I’m copying:




The green bits are Asuka, because this is a little fitting that Dragon seems to have skipped completely. Luckily, I don’t need it on the complete tank because the deep-wading gear will cover it, so I could just stick it onto the monument tank.

 

[Jakko]

The final drive takes some work to make it all fit.



This is the Academy transmission attached to the final drive, with some plastic strip and punched bolt heads to convert the latter to the earlier three-piece type (to match the outside). It’s not completely accurate, but most of it will be out of sight anyway. I also had to cut down the top of the inner housing so that the hull top would fit over it — again, this will be completely out of sight, so no worries about lost detail:



It then required some surgery on the upper hull too, as it has a ledge at the front that normally sits up against the outer final drive housing, but now the inside is in the way, of course:



Everything together then looks like this:



All this is still loose, of course. The hull floor has the transmission and inner drive attached, but it’s not glued to the hull, and neither is the outer final drive housing.

Next step is probably the power take-off for the flail, which means building a large trunk angling diagonally upwards to the right from just behind the transmission. (That’s what the pencil marks on the sponsons are for, for those who spotted them and wondered: they indicate where the hole in the side armour would be, as the trunk of course needs to line up with that.)

 

[JR]

Good grief Jakko, it's a good job I'm not attempting the Dragon version, it would completely bear me.
Nice detail on the Asuka parts .

 

[Jakko]

Even based on the few bits I’ve put together so far, I would definitely recommend Asuka Shermans over Dragon’s, in case you want to build a Russian M4A2 It’s got a lot of parts too, but the moulding quality, fit etc. are Tamiya-like rather than Dragon-like, and with much more finesse than either of those.

 

[Jakko]

The Crab had a large housing behind the assistant driver’s (right-hand) seat, and while trying to work out where and how this fits, I figured out that the escape hatch in the Academy floor is too large and in the wrong position, so I decided to cut the rear floor off, leaving only the drivers’ position:



Here’s a comparison of how much the hatch’s location differs between the Academy and Asuka efforts:



The Academy floor is further forward here by about 2 mm than it should be because of the fittings on the firewall, and even then you can see the difference in locations. It’s even further back with the floor in the correct position.

You may think: it will hardly be seen, will it? But it turns out that this hatch is fairly obvious through the driver’s hatch, and the Academy hatch will interfere with a vertical post that needs to go inside the hull next to it.

Now I need more information on the actual housing, as I have exactly one drawing that shows it, but luckily someone on another forum is (hopefully) looking up the photos he has of a real Crab’s interior for me

Then more fun was had with the wheels:



Asuka on the left, Dragon (and one Asuka) on the right. There are only eleven for the derelict tank, as it was missing the No. 5 wheel on the left-hand side. All these are the pressed-spoke style, because all five ones visible in the photos of the real thing were like that. I only know of one picture that shows the right-hand side, but no wheels are clearly enough visible in it to tell if they were of a different type

I need to get the mould seam off them all still, though. I had expected to use the same method as for my earlier Sherman V, namely to put them in my father’s lathe and just turn them down, but no such luck … It seems I did it on that one before glueing the wheel halves together — these I glued first, and now none of the screws we could find, fit because the holes on the two sides are different sizes. (A screw is needed to be able to hold the wheel in the lathe: put it though the axle hole, put a nut on it, and then chuck the screw into the lathe.)

The monument tank, on the other hand, will have all twelve wheels, but needs three different styles — ten pressed-spoke style, as per the derelict tank, plus one smooth concave and one smooth convex type, on stations 3 and 4 on the left-hand side:



Both these are replacements added during the 1994 restoration (the tank had two concave ones after an earlier repair, on stations 2 and 5 on the left). Anyway, the concave wheel is simply from the Asuka kit, since it includes a full set of them; the concave wheel I made by cutting and scraping the spokes off one of the kit’s wheels. Looking at the photo, I see it needs a bit more effort — it looks done in the flesh, but not in the photo.

Also note the sprocket rings on the drive wheels: those are from an ancient Italeri Sherman, not the Dragon kit. This had no particular reason, except that when I looked at the parts, it dawned on me that these Dragon Shermans actually derive from the Italeri ones: the drive sprocket is not only identical in construction, but also in dimensions. That’s to say, Italeri sprocket rings fit perfectly on the Dragon hubs. I had a ton of the Italeri ones in my Sherman spares box, and decided to use them so I could leave the Dragon ones on their sprues — for no other reason than that this would be neater when I put those sprues with the leftover parts into that box

 

[SimonT]

Hi Jakko

The final drive housings look rather different in size between the two kits - unless it is just the photo

 

[Jakko]

Now you mention it … For some reason, I’ve not held them up to each other to check, but I’ll do that when I get back to the model probably later today. I did try some more test-fitting of the Dragon one, though, and I still can’t figure out how it should actually go on to fit correctly. Very poor design, IMHO.

 

[Jakko]

After comparing the two, they turn out to be pretty much identical in dimensions, so it looks like the photos distort them somewhat.

Continuing with the running gear, I’ve now got the basics of the left side for the monument tank:



Sherman wheels have two grease nipples on one side but not the other, for example, and the positions of the spokes etc. are “fixed” on a monument, so I went back to the real thing yesterday to take more pictures just to get the wheel positions and damage right About half the wheels are on inside out, I discovered, and the damage to the rubber tyres is also interesting and not all that easy to replicate on the model. Carving with a modelling knife seems to have done the trick, though. I also thinned the outer edges of the skids on top and drilled out holes in the return rollers that Dragon somehow missed:



What I still need to add now is bolt heads to the skids (Dragon puts some on the sprues but says not to use them … though I’ll add them with a hex punch and die set) and drill holes in the fronts of the bogies. For that, though, I’ll need to make a jig first so I get them all the same. Once all that is done, I’ll also have to rust these up — see the pictures earlier for how bad the rust is. I think this will require something like a thin layer of putty, that I’ll then stipple to create the rust texture.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Really interesting. Not just the comparison between the kits but also the work needed to ensure historical accuracy. Progress so far shows you are certainly up to the challenge.
Jim

 

[Jakko]

Thanks, I do my best to get these accurate within my abilities

 

[Jakko]

All of the bogies are now finished, except for the rust:



To ensure all the bogies go into the correct position on the tank, I scribed the number onto the back. As you can see above, though, I didn’t take enough care to put them in the right order for the photo The bogies are still articulated at this point, so I can fix them in the correct positions when they’re on the tank — the missing tyre bits on the undersides of some of the wheels means they won’t all line up otherwise.

I detailed all of them by adding six bolt heads to the skid and return roller bracket and drilling four 0.5 mm holes into the front (this is where the bracket could also be mounted, because the bogies were identical on the left and right sides of the tank):



For the holes, I made a jig from some plastic card and square rod:



I initially wanted to use this to drill through, but even before the first bogie was done, I found it easier to stick a pin through the holes to mark the locations, then remove the jig and drill out the pin marks instead.

 

[Jakko]

On to the other tank’s suspension … No overall shot because, hey, when built they look basically the same as the other ones, except green Instead, a comparison between the parts from the two brands. First the Asuka parts, then the Dragon ones:



In both photos, the wheels have already been built (they’re two-piece in both kits) and in the Dragon one, the springs and the yoke below them have also been glued together (because I had done that before deciding to take these photos) but everything else is the individual parts. As you can see, the Asuka ones consist of more bits, in order to make the bogies articulate more accurately. Compare them in the photo below to see what I mean:



Notice how the upper arms move relative to the lower ones in the Asuka parts but stay in the same place on the Dragon parts (and on the Italeri ones they’re based on too, for that matter). Asuka provides plastic spacers (the flat parts marked A, B and C) to go above the springs, but fails to say which ones you’ll need — in fact, the spacers aren’t mentioned in the instructions at all, but only on a diagram on the side of the box … Now, Sherman Crabs had their front suspension compressed at all times because of the weight of the flail equipment, so I decided to go for B (1 mm thick) for the front bogies, A+C (2 mm total) for the middle and A+B (2.5 mm) for the rear ones, but you can’t get the bogies to close over the last one, so that became 2 mm as well. I again drilled holes in the fronts as for the Dragon parts, and added two bolt heads — Asuka moulds all the others on the skids already, and the outer edges of these are also thin enough that you only need to clean up a mould part line, not thin the whole edge down like for the Dragon kit.

Once the bogies were dry, I used Blu-Tack to attach them to the hull, applied glue to the arms of the front two bogies and placed the model on a glass plate with a weight inside to keep the front down:



I’ll only glue the rear ones when the others have dried, because I need to pull the wheels on these down a little so they all reach the ground.

Oh, and another fun thing about the Dragon kit. See if you spot what’s wrong with it in regards to the drive sprockets:



Yes, the pins are too long to go all the way into the final drive housing … The length of the pins is another Italeri throwback, and is no problem at all if there is a hole in the hull side. Somehow, though, Dragon have forgotten to make one … Even more strangely, the sides for the one-piece housing do have holes deep enough to accommodate the pins. Not sure what Dragon’s designers were doing here, but building the kit probably wasn’t in their job description