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- Apr 28, 2018
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- Jakko
Since I was painting two Shermans at more or less the same time, here is the other one finished:
The crew are Royal Model, intended for an M26 Pershing but equally suitable for an M4, if you ask me. I put the co-driver in the loader’s hatch, busy reaching for a bottle (he is intended to have his arm resting on the open co-driver’s hatch) and left out the loader figure, who will go into another model at some point.
Though a bit hard to see in this photo, I painted the crew as black men, even though they have more or less caucasian features, because 761 Tank Battalion was a “colored” unit, meaning it had white officers as well as black ones, but all enlisted men were black. They were apparently one of the best American tank battalions in Europe exactly because of the institutional racism of the time: the 761st had spent several years in the USA playing the enemy in exercises with units slated for being sent overseas, so its members had far more experience than most other “green” units going to war. It was eventually deployed to France in October 1944. The battalion ended up in Patton’s Third Army, and thus in combat, only because that was desperate for replacement troops, not because of any enlightened attitudes. They were then in combat for the next six months and ended the war in Austria.
The crew are Royal Model, intended for an M26 Pershing but equally suitable for an M4, if you ask me. I put the co-driver in the loader’s hatch, busy reaching for a bottle (he is intended to have his arm resting on the open co-driver’s hatch) and left out the loader figure, who will go into another model at some point.
Though a bit hard to see in this photo, I painted the crew as black men, even though they have more or less caucasian features, because 761 Tank Battalion was a “colored” unit, meaning it had white officers as well as black ones, but all enlisted men were black. They were apparently one of the best American tank battalions in Europe exactly because of the institutional racism of the time: the 761st had spent several years in the USA playing the enemy in exercises with units slated for being sent overseas, so its members had far more experience than most other “green” units going to war. It was eventually deployed to France in October 1944. The battalion ended up in Patton’s Third Army, and thus in combat, only because that was desperate for replacement troops, not because of any enlightened attitudes. They were then in combat for the next six months and ended the war in Austria.
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Nice Finish Jakko, the figures look good.
