Make tanks when the sun shines

25 July 2019

Now that the good weather has got us out into the garden, it's clearly the ideal time for a game of What a Tanker! So I dug out some old purchases and began to build.

I laid out my earlier rushed buys from T’internet on the garden. Comprising Two Cromwell IV’s, Two Panzer IV H’s, One Sherman Firefly VC and Two Tiger Ones. Five Sherman V’s or the Firefly option 😊



I started with the individual packs and chose the Sherman Firefly to work on first. I must say this was a great little starter so I could get back in the groove.

And there we have it after about 20 minutes of sorting the model’s part out and then cutting, filing and gluing those various bits together we made the Sherman Firefly VC with a 17pdr gun it looks the business. The main gun in a Sherman Firefly was the Ordnance Quick-Firing 17-pounder.

The 17-pounder gun was the best British gun of the war and one of the more powerful guns of any nationality. It could penetrate more armour than the 8.8 cm in the German Tiger I or Panther’s 7.5cm gun. I am pleased that it ended up looking the part and is now ready for painting. But that’s the subject of another blog.

I moved onto the Panzer IV H and went through a similar process to the Sherman. The IV was the German mainstay and about 8,500 were built. The IV H was produced in the summer of 1943, the armour was improved to a single 80-millimetre (3.15 in) plate. 

To combat magnetic anti-tank mines, Zimmerit paste was added to all the vertical surfaces of the tank.

The vehicle's side and turret were further protected by the addition of hull and turret skirts and carried a 7.5 cm gun.

The Cromwell IV is an old favourite of mine and looks like a proper British Tank. The Cromwell tank was a Cruiser MKVIII and was one of a series of cruiser tanks used by Britain in the war. Using the name of the English Civil War leader Oliver Cromwell, it was the first British tank to combine the high speed, power and reliability of the Rolls-Royce Meteor engine with reasonable armour.

The intended high velocity gun could not be used in the smallish turret and the next gun down proved inadequate.

An improved version with a high velocity gun became the Comet tank as the conflict wore. “Fear Naught” was the motto of the Royal Tank Regiment.