T34/85 Medium tank, Warlord Games

"Arguably the best tank of World War II, the T34/85 with its new turret and upgraded weaponry added to the sloped armour, saw extensive action during World War II and long afterwards. This iconic Soviet tank performed well in Korean and Vietnam wars as well as the battles in the Middle-East and even the Bosnian war of the 1980's."

 

Well that's what it says on the box anyway. It was definitely the best medium Soviet tank of the war. This 28mm WWII Soviet medium tank is available from Warlord Games (currently £20) with which I plan to use to smash my mate Ade's forces into smithereens when we play Bolt Action games (this is a vain attempt at psychological warfare as Ade is a far better player than me).

The main body and turret of the tank are resin with the tracks, barrel and commander/hatch in metal. The kit comes with various different commander figure options including just the hatch which can be modelled closed which is a nice touch but the scale of games I intend to play are limited to only one tank by the Bolt Action rules.

 

I had a couple of issues with the model itself, but nothing I couldn't fix. Fortunately the metal tracks are designed with handed locating pins which ensures that you can't fix the tracks on backwards. Unfortunately with this particular model the resin body appears to have warped slightly which meant I had to carve away some of the resin body to make the tracks fit. This still left a gap which ran the length of the tracks but I used greenstuff to fill the gap and to act as a glue as the contact wasn't good enough for the superglue to work properly.

 

The hole in the turret for the barrel was also slightly too large so I used some more greenstuff to fix this in place.

The tank was completely painted with Russian Green (Vallejo 894) then given various washes of green, brown and black ink. A highlight was then also applied. The slogan was painted on freehand.

 

I could have left the model in the factory fresh state but it was at this point I went to work on it with weathering powders. In this case I used MIG weathering products (there's also new sets available from Humbrol). I had bought these years ago, put them into a drawer and promptly forget all about them so this is the first time I've ever actually used these products in anger. So far I've been impressed by the results.

If you've never used these before they are really simple to apply. Put a small amount of the powder into a suitable dish/plastic container, add a little thinners or white spirit/turps and then brush the mix on to the model. Then leave to dry. It really is as simple as that.

For this I was testing the following MIG pigments:

Rubbel(sic) Dust P234
Industrial City Dirt P039
Brick Dust P023
Standard Rust P025

 

The white spirit evaporates leaving the powder in place. If you don't like it you can either wipe it away using a cotton bud (cotton swabs/Q-tips for our American cousins) dipped in white spirit/turps or you can just rub it off. However there is a chance you'll remove the base paint but it's easy to touch up with original colour. Building up various layers helps with the overall look. Once you get more confident you can even flick the mixture onto the model to give even more realistic results.

Lincoln Mark IV Female tank

The Museum of Lincolnshire Life, housed in Victorian army barracks, has on display one of the first tanks developed by the local firm of William Foster & Co. The tank, named "Flirt II" is a Mark IV Female (armed with machine guns rather than cannon) although the tank on display was actually built in Birmingham (Oldbury?) one of the 595 built during the war. This tank saw action at the famous Battle of Cambrai in November 1917.

In case you were wondering the box art for the Emhar MK IV was based on this particlar tank. The chaps from Ehmar used this example for reference.

From 1917 numerous Mark IV tanks were used to promote the sale of War Bonds and War Saving Certificates. The Government released tanks to towns and cities throughout the country. After the war all, except one in Ashford Kent, were scrapped. These Presentation Tanks were displayed throughout the midlands including: Birmingham, Brierley Hill (my home town, I believe the tank was on display outside St Michael’s church), Dudley, Oldbury, Smethwick, Stourbridge, Sutton Coalfield, Walsall, Willenhall and Wolverhampton.

Date of visit: 28th March 2008.