M4A3 (76) HVSS just off the boat

[Jakko]

Now my blown-up M113 is almost done, I can almost begin with the next model I intend to make:



I’ve not built a Tamiya kit in ages, so I suppose I’ll find myself surprised at the ease of building compared to most of the recent kits I’ve made

Also, as per usual the name on the box is not for the purist The designation “M4A3E8” only applied to the prototypes and test vehicles with HVSS (horizontal volute spring suspension), but the “E8” suffix has come to be applied by enthusiasts and modellers to pretty much any M4 medium tank with that suspension. Properly, this tank is probably best described as an M4A3 (76) HVSS, to reflect it’s an M4 with the Ford V8 engine, a 76 mm gun and the aforementioned suspension.

Anyway … Open the box and you get:



Here’s the sprues:



I probably won’t be using the tracks, as I also have these from AFV Club (two of the eight sprues shown):



Though the T66 tracks Tamiya provides were more common in 1945, these T80 ones also appeared very late in the war.

Of course, I can’t just build it as-is The idea is to build it as a tank prepared for shipping overseas. This means all openings will be covered with tape with waterproofing stuff sprayed over it, and there will be some boxes on the engine deck. I’ll probably replace a few bits with ones from my spares box, because (for example) it seems rather a waste to use the nice cupola with clear viewports when that will be entirely taped over.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Settling in to enjoy this.
Jim

 

[Jakko]

Lower hull mostly built, which took a little more care than I had expected from a Tamiya kit:



The reason being, it’s built up from a floor and two side plates (both in two pieces themselves), rather than being moulded in one piece, and the fit isn’t as positive and unambiguous as I had expected. Still, nothing even an inexperienced modeller shouldn’t be able to handle.

For the Shermanophiles, the hull has the correct cutouts along the lower edges, to give clearance for the suspension to move, and they are neat and straight like they should be for a model of a 1944/45 tank that left the factory with HVSS. You can just see them in the photo. (Many tanks were upgraded with this suspension after the war, and they had those bits cut out much more irregularly.)

Also nice is the lugs inside the hull floor, where you can put nuts for mounting the model on a diorama using one or two bolts through the base and hull floor. I also test-fitted the upper hull, and it goes on seamlessly. Oddly, Tamiya puts a poly cap on the hull rear with a stud on the inside of the engine deck, so the upper hull can remain removable. I wonder if they also do a motorised variant of this kit?

 

[Jakko]

Tamiya provides a very nice exhaust grille, which hinges upwards out of the way of the engine access door just like on the real tank:



This is six pieces: two sides and four curved plates for the duct/louvres, and looks very good. Unfortunately, for shipment overseas, nearly all openings were sealed with duck tape, so nothing of this will be visible. Because I am averse to this kind of wasting good parts, I instead replaced it by a few bits of plastic card cut to give more or less the correct depth but nothing else:



For the same reason, I replaced the commander’s cupola on the turret:



If you look closely, you can see the turret is a different colour from the ring below the hatch, and the hatch is a different colour still. This is because the ring is from an Asuka M4A3E2 kit (which comes with two: one opaque and one clear) and the hatch is from the ancient Italeri M4A1 (76) kit, bought at a time when Italeri were moulding it in olive drab plastic — 15, 20 years ago maybe? All of this will be covered with tape, so it’s not a problem that the parts are slightly mismatched.

And again the same reason led me to dive into my spares box for driver’s hatches as well:



These are by Dragon, to be precise from their Israeli M50 Sherman kit on which I used hatches from Italeri, mainly because the Dragon ones had the handles moulded on. All of these grab handles were not covered with tape when the tank was waterproofed, so I couldn’t leave the moulded-on “handles” in place. I cut them off, drilled holes and inserted a piece of copper wire bent to shape.

The photo shows what I find a good way of adding these: make them too long and stick them out the other side. You can then slide them up to the right height and apply some superglue from the inside. Once the glue dries, you can cut them off flush with the hatch, if necessary.

In place on the hull:



I had to file the rounded parts of the hatches a bit to get them to fit, but once more: all of this will be covered, so no problem if the work might be a little shoddy

 

[Jakko]

Well, the AFV Club tracks are a no-go I had bought them a looooong time ago for a Dragon HVSS Sherman, but on which I ended up not using them. Yesterday, I decided to make a start on them, so I removed two links from the sprue to test fit etc., due to my none-too-stellar experience with other AFV Club Sherman tracks two years ago. These T80 tracks suffer many of the exact same problems: ejector marks on the insides of the links and pins that are too narrow, so the end connectors simply fall off the links.

Luckily AFV Club did do one thing right: the connectors on the sprue edges are spaced exactly the right width apart that you could — in theory — assemble a length of track into them, then slide the connectors for the other side onto them and cut them all off. This works fine with their tracks for the M48/M60 MBT series, and would have done so here as well, except of course the links won’t stay in the connectors …

I took another look at Tamiya’s tracks, but they seem too flat and shallow. However, finding replacement T66 tracks is proving harder than expected, as I don’t feel like metal ones but I haven’t found any non-metal separate-link tracks yet that are actually available. Using T66 tracks, though, would also help a little in that I won’t have to add attachments for the canvas cover over the gun mantlet to the kit, so I think that’s the route I’ll take, using the Tamiya tracks if I have to. But hopefully not

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Lucky you have a good selection of spare parts. Interesting idea to model it ready for shipment - not seen it done before. Shame about the tracks. Any reason, apart from cost, for not considering metal tracks?
Jim

 

[JR]

Looking good Jakko.
When I do the replacement brass handles I now slide a section of white plastic strip under to get a even distance then glue.

 

[Jakko]

Lucky you have a good selection of spare parts.

Those spare hatches finally came in handy

Interesting idea to model it ready for shipment - not seen it done before.

Neither have I, but when I saw some photos in Son of Sherman I thought that would be so much more interesting than yet another tank in/before/after action. (That’s probably what my next one will be, likely the M4A3E2 I stole the cupola off )

Shame about the tracks. Any reason, apart from cost, for not considering metal tracks?

I’ve never used metal tracks, but the idea of them doesn’t appeal to me — especially not the Friul way of having to insert track pins. On a vehicle with slack tracks, like a Second World War German tank, I can kind of see the point, but on American vehicles that should have taut tracks, they would very likely sag too much to be realistic.

When I do the replacement brass handles I now slide a section of white plastic strip under to get a even distance then glue.

Good point. I forgot to mention that I usually slide my knife or a metal sculpting tool underneath to get them to the right height. Friction is normally enough to keep it at that height when I remove the tool and apply glue.

 

[Jakko]

Why can’t I ever pick subjects that are quick and easy to build? I’ve begun adding the waterproofing tape over the openings and hatches, and it’s turning out to be quite a chore … I’m using Tamiya tape cut into ca. 1.5 mm widths, to represent the duck tape used on the real thing. Once in place, I smear superglue over it all with my finger and/or a cocktail stick, because I’m not convinced masking tape adhesive will last all that long.

Part of the problem is the effort and care needed to cut that to the right width, and partly it’s that I don’t have enough photos to show all the bits taped up, so I’m essentially guessing how they would have done this for much of the tank.

Here is the exhaust grille:



I had to pull the exhaust pipes off again because they got in the way for the grille, as well as for the engine access door that I still need to tape up.

The hull front:



This is mostly done, and only needs the bow machine gun mount taped up. You can see why I didn’t want to use the very nicely detailed Tamiya hatches here I cut off the machine gun barrel and replaced it by a short piece of plastic rod, because on the real tank the hole was plugged with a bit of wood. Also, the headlight sockets have been taped shut, since these were removable and stowed inside.

And the engine deck:



This actually used two large pieces of 18 mm masking tape that I didn’t cut into strips, because there will be a pallet with large boxes over it, so there is no need to represent all the individual pieces of tape.

 

[Jakko]

These tanks carried a pallet on the engine deck with two crates of stuff. In Son of Sherman is a photo that shows it well enough to build from plastic strip:



I cut the strips to length with my guillotine, the short ones are 37 mm, the longer ones are 50 mm (ignore the very short bits, I mistook the photo as showing a block in the middle when it actually was two smaller pieces, one under each slat). In the side pieces, I filed two notches as per the photo.

Assembled into a pallet:



And on the tank (still loose):

 

[Graeme C.]

Interesting subject Jakko, a variation on a the usual Sherman, you don't really think about how they got to where they were needed.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko

Why can’t I ever pick subjects that are quick and easy to build?

Probably because you like a challenge and get a kick out of producing a unique model.
Anyway the taping up looks to have worked well and the pallet fits nicely.
Jim

 

[Mini Me]

Same here Jim....almost a necessity in the scale I model in....Great progress on an unusual variant of the venerable Sherman there Jakko looking for more on this interesting build. Rick H.

 

[Jakko]

Interesting subject Jakko, a variation on a the usual Sherman, you don't really think about how they got to where they were needed.

Indeed, until I read the chapter about that in Son of Sherman, I hadn’t really. You can also tell that these tanks were designed to be shipped overseas by another feature people don’t usually give a second thought: the lifting eyes on the hull. Pretty much no Second World War tanks other than American ones had these, because of the realisation that they would be fighting wars far from their doorstep.

Probably because you like a challenge and get a kick out of producing a unique model.

Those are the reasons I had settled on myself, too

Anyway the taping up looks to have worked well and the pallet fits nicely.

In that case, here’s another picture



I finished the firing port earlier (you can tell by the superglue smears ) and tonight did most of the mantlet. This is not glued yet, because I need to trim the tape on the turret to size and add a strip or two over them all, vertically up the side and across the roof. Then part 1 of the real fun begins, working out how to best tape up the cupola and loader’s hatch …

 

[Steven000]

Interesting project Jakko, I always assumed duct tape was invented after the war.
Taping looks great

 

[Jakko]

Apparently, it was developed into its modern form during the war, and used to seal ammunition boxes. It’s clear from photos of tanks waterproofed for shipping that it was used for that too.

 

[Jakko]

More tape, how unexpected …



On the hull rear I taped up the engine access door and (re)fitted the exhausts, also with tape over their open ends. On the front, the machine gun ball mount was fun — not. Adding bits of tape of about 5 mm long and 1.5 mm wide into small corners with sharply pointed tweezers is something I was glad to have behind me The engine deck has tape over the hinges now, and I also closed the gap between the gun shield and the barrel, as well as taping over the whole muzzle brake.

That part, by the way, I sawed off an old gun barrel, I think from a Tamiya Jagdpanzer IV, because I didn’t want to hide the very nice muzzle brake in the Sherman kit. The muzzle brake the Americans developed for the 76 mm gun M1 was closely based on the German one anyway, to the extent that, apparently, one could be taken from a Panzer IV and put onto an M1A1C or M1A2 gun.

 

[Steven000]

Nice progress Jakko, how many rolls of Tamiya tape you've used so far?

I was wondering how well the paint will stick to the Tamiya tape as it's quite delicate I think.
You mentioned covering it with super-glue, but it's hard to see in the pictures, so all the tape surfaces are covered in super-glue?

Looking good, have fun
Steven

 

[Tim Marlow]

Looking good Jakko. It shows your trademark meticulous research coupled with attention to detail .

 

[Jakko]

Nice progress Jakko, how many rolls of Tamiya tape you've used so far?

Less than you’d think, as I need to keep cutting it into 1.5 mm wide strips Tip for anyone else trying this: buy tape that wide before starting …

I was wondering how well the paint will stick to the Tamiya tape as it's quite delicate I think.
You mentioned covering it with super-glue, but it's hard to see in the pictures, so all the tape surfaces are covered in super-glue?

It should be. I put a drop of superglue onto the tape and then smear it out with my finger, and repeat as necessary to try and to cover all of the tape. The idea was more that this will glue the tape in place, as I had’t considered the paint coming off the tape itself yet, but now you mention it, hopefully it helps for that too …

Looking good Jakko. It shows your trademark meticulous research coupled with attention to detail .

Thanks, though I must admit that the actual placement of the tape is largely guesswork. The general areas it’s in are not, but the configuration of the tape and the exact areas covered are very hard to determine from the few photos I have