Malkara Cromwell - Finished

[buzzbomb]

Reckon I might be able to  contribute to this GB, so looking through all the great builds there are very few vehicles. Time to add another one in

The topic got me thinking about suitable Whiffer vehicles for this period and thumbing through some books and the interwebnet, the Malkara Anti Tank Missile popped up, one of the very early ATGM.
Malkara project was started in the early 1950's and wound up by the end of the 1950's
A joint development by the Australians and the British, it was not super successful, but certainly paved the way for improved projects.
There were some RW vehicles built around the Malkara, the Humber Hornet plus a plan to use the Centurion which would have been a complete new build with a superstructure and years in development.

But why not use a tank chassis that is not a front line tank anymore, nearing end of life, but still a useful and quite quick  platform, the Cromwell, which served front line up until the Korean war, albeit, not so successfully.

Tamiya Cromwell, viceless, simple to build kit.


Malkara missiles, or close enough for this build anyway out of Evergreen and some bits. If you think you get a Seacat vibe... meet its grandad


Much hackage of the turret, first I was mounting behind the turret in a bustle, but that really blew chunks. So glad I did not take pictures of that.
So I now working on the AMX/SS11 type front mounted . However the Malkara is a honking big missile, over 6 feet long, so the gun had to go and only two mounted, but maybe some sort or ready reload might turn up on the rear of the turret hence the removed (at this stage) Loaders hatch, so  missile can be manhandled via track into the launcher.



Now I have a hankering for Bronze Green colour scheme as well. Let's see how it goes

[Old Wombat]

 

[rickshaw]

Interesting.  Not sure about the idea of a front mount.  Side mounted would have been easier and made sure the front of the turret was well protected.  Great choice of a missile.   

[Dizzyfugu]

That's a neat idea. 

[Old Wombat]

Interesting that the Malkara didn't use a launch rail but, rather, a pylon, to which the missile was attached at 2 points until launched.

[Wardukw]

There's a guy on YouTube I watch called Armoured Archives and he did a couple of vids on this missile and it's competition..talk about a huge pain in the arse to load ..the crew had to mount the fins from inside the vehicle before launching and their size was another draw back ..no doubting they were damn powerful ATMs but that's the RW ..not WW ..so these are gonna work just fine 🙂

[NARSES2]

Looking forward to seeing this progress 

[buzzbomb]

After a pondering session, some blu-Tack work and a bit of hand wringing, I ditched the Cromwell turret idea.

Interesting.  Not sure about the idea of a front mount.  Side mounted would have been easier and made sure the front of the turret was well protected.  Great choice of a missile. 

Brian, pretty much came to the same conclusion, it is not working. So a new turret build may perhaps be no more engineering than to modify an existing turret to get a better result.
I thought about just hacking the sides off and go that way, but even then, work there made building a newer one easier for me.

A 3d Printed base and some plastic card work. Next is the curved front on then get the Launcher Pylons there.



Thanks for the support so far.

[Wardukw]

Part 2 looks much better Buzzy mate..nothing to to with it being practical or anything like that..just looks better ..fills the hull out more and balances the whole machine out..yep looking great man 👍

[Dizzyfugu]

Cool, I like it a lot. 

[NARSES2]

Cool, I like it a lot. 

As do I sir 

[rickshaw]

Much better! 

[PR19_Kit]

VERY fast work there! 

'A new turret design? No problem, we'll just weld one up.' 

[loupgarou]

Yes, this solution is really promising.

[AeroplaneDriver]

Definitely liking the side mount better.  Great looking project!