M4A3 (90 mm) HVSS, Operation Coronet, 1946

[Jakko]

Hey all, first post here so I figure I'll start off with something relatively simple

A few years ago, I purchased an Asuka M4A3 (76 mm) HVSS kit second-hand:

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But TBH, a Japanese Sherman holds little or no interest for me, so I decided to do something else with it. Browsing Hunnicutt's Sherman, I came across the section about the trials that were held with the turret from the T26E3 heavy tank (later to be known as the M26 Pershing), which includes this drawing (shamelessly stolen from Panzerserra for posting here):

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As well as this photo of an actual trials vehicle:

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At which point I remembered that I had this left in my spares box:

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... from when I built Tamiya's T26E3 almost 20 years ago, but converted it into the single T26E4 that was used in combat:

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Both the drawing and the trials tank are on M4 hulls, but since the US Army's preferred tank late in the Second World War was the M4A3, and the Asuka kit has a lte version of that with things like torsion bars on the engine deck hatches and armoured exhaust grilles, I figured I could make a believable M4A3 (90 mm) HVSS as it might have appeared in the 1946 invasion of the Japanese home islands ...

For this to happen, of course, the US Army must have thought 90 mm Shermans were a good idea (they didn't in the real world) and no atomic bombs would have to have been dropped on Japan, but other than that, I'd say it's quite a plausible vehicle. Certainly possible in the real world both physically and without stretching believability, which is how I like my what-if models

[NARSES2]

Welcome, nice entrance 

[Old Wombat]

When will we get to see the photo's, Chris?


PS:

In lieu of being able to see the photo's at this point in time, I'll say that it sounds like a great idea & I'll be watching!

For this to happen, of course, the US Army must have thought 90 mm Shermans were a good idea (they didn't in the real world) and no atomic bombs would have to have been dropped on Japan, but other than that, I'd say it's quite a plausible vehicle. Certainly possible in the real world both physically and without stretching believability, which is how I like my what-if models

This is Whif World; it's what we do here!  

[kerick]

This looks very interesting. I'll be watching this one!

[Jakko]

When will we get to see the photo's, Chris?

I can see them in the message now. I couldn't before my post was approved, but at the same time, it now says the post's attachments are awaiting approval ...

This is Whif World; it's what we do here!  

What I meant was that there are (as if I need to say this here ) varying degrees of "what-if", and in browsing the forum before and after joining it, I saw a range of them — and that my preference is for ones that stay close to real history.

Let's see if photos of the actual build, rather than the intro, will show up right away ...

Adapting the Tamiya turret to the Asuka hull is easy enough. The Tamiya turret ring is about 2 mm smaller than the Asuka one, so:

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... two strips of 0.5 × 1 mm strip around it fixes that nicely. This is easier than one strip of 1 mm thick, because it bends better.

Building the turret, I very quickly ran into some issues with the Hunnicutt drawing and trials vehicle. Which is to say, the drawing was clearly made by someone just plonking a T26E3 turret onto an M4A1 HVSS hull, and that means it has some redundancies — chiefly, the spare track stowage. HVSS Shermans have spare track links stowed along the rear hull sides, which would be far more convenient than on the left side of the turret, so I deleted the rack there (though I had first glued one to the turret, before realising the things I just explained). On the right-hand side, the rack can also go: this was for bad-weather hoods for the driver's and assistant driver's hatches, but in a Sherman those are stored internally above the transmission.

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The commander's cupola ring is from my spares box, IIRC from Asuka (could be it's from the M4A3 kit), because I had put the Tamiya one on the T26E4 due to Accurate Armour having made a mistake with the cupola's alignment in their conversion set that I used. The gun barrel is from an Academy M36, but afterward I began to wonder why I used that at all, given that I still had the Tamiya barrel as well ... though that didn't have its muzzle anymore, because it was also needed for the T26E4. Maybe that's why I used the Academy barrel instead.

At the rear of the turret, the grey bits are the M2 HB barrel stowage. These are leftover parts from an old Dragon M26 kit, because the Tamiya turret includes the bits of L-angle iron, but omits the actual barrel stowage clips in them ... easier to cut them off and replace them than to try and make those myself. The catch for the loader's hatch is from that same Dragon kit.

The lugs on the left-hand side of the turret are for a crane to lift the engine in the T26. I had fitted them to the model, thinking something like that would be useful in an M4 too. However, I deleted them later on and puttied over their mounting holes as well when I put the turret onto the hull and figured out that the front one fouls the driver's hatch badly enough that he couldn't use it with the turret at 12 o'clock.

On the hull front, I decided to fit an M3-4-3 flamethrower instead of the bow machine gun:

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Really nothing more than some plastic tube of guestimated dimensions The reason for it is the much more widespread use of flamethrowers in the Pacific than in Europe, so if this is a tank going up against fanatical Japanese defending their home country, it might well be fitted.

And the model basically finished:

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If possible, I normally leave wheels and tracks off until after painting, so they're missing here still. The white bits on the left rear of the engine deck are the gun cleaning rods. The 90 mm gun M3 had a three-piece cleaning rod, and they're too long to fit in the normal position on an M4 (underneath the rear stowage rack) so this seems the best place to put them.

And I made a loader's figure:

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 A MiniArt US tanker with a gas mask from the old Tamiya US infantry weapons set, for which I had to carve off most of his face The hose is copper wire with thinner wire wrapped around it, the straps are very thin plastic card.

[Jakko]

On to the tracks. The Asuka kit includes soft-plastic tracks to which hard-plastic chevrons need to be glued. However, that makes them T84 tracks, which were a post-war development, so I needed T80s (the steel chevron type) instead — in addition to not really wanting to use the soft plastic ones anyway. My first thought was to use AFV Club T80s:

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But all I can say is: don't bother. They're hard to remove from the sprues (they tend to bend or even break in the middle of the links), there are two big ejector pin marks to clean up on the inside of each link (see the sprue on the left), and worst of all, the end connectors just slide off half the links or more ... You can only build these if you glue everything together, which kind of defeats the purpose of having the end connectors separate, if you ask me.

Luckily, RFM released a set. Unluckily ...well, judge for yourself:

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That's two sprues, which make just over one track — not each, but together ... I think it took me over an hour to just separate and clean up all the parts, per sprue. (I bought the Takom M247 Sgt. York DIVADS recently. It has exactly the same design of track — close enough that it makes me think RFM and Takom are part of the same parent company — so about the first thing I did with it was sell those on to some other sucker a more dedicated modeller than I am and put a set of AFV Club T142 tracks into the box instead.)

The jigs RFM gives you are crap, as is their recommended assembly sequence. They would have you put twelve outer track pads into one half of the jig, lay a set of seven end connectors/track pins over them, glue on the inner track pads and the guide horns, and then squeeze it all into line with the other half of the jig. First of all, the track sticks in the jig if you do that, making it annoying to do. Worse, it means you're assembling lengths of six that you then need to join together without the benefit of a jig.

My advice is to cut the rounded bits off two lower jigs so you can glue them together with a bit of plastic card backing:

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Take care to space them correctly, which is easy enough if you build one set of six links first and use it to align the two jig pieces.

Then glue guide horns to each set of track pins while those are still on the sprue, and you can assemble sets of seven links continuously:

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Don't use the other half of the jig at all: just put a little dot of liquid cement into the hollow on an outer pad, slide an inner pad in place, and press it down firmly with your finger.

Beware that there is a lot of play in these tracks — with enough links assembled for this model, a track laid flat and pushed all the way together is a full 2 cm shorter than the same track stretched out as far as possible. It's a good thing Asuka Shermans have adjustable idlers.

[PR19_Kit]

Very strange, I can see your later pics but not the original ones. 

Hopefully Chris will sort it when he comes on site tomorrow.

[Wardukw]

Welcome to the nuthouse Jakko mate 
I've done my time with Sherman's.. dozens of them to be honest so they don't rock my boat anymore .
Yours is going to be a very nice build that's for sure and being a RW one is no issue here at all..we welcome them all but eventually your gonna get bitten like I did and RW will bore the hell out of you..first hand experience here bud.
In our world the rules are rather simple..none.
In my WW2 but not as we know it thread which is here I took a Easy8 hull..mounted it to a M26 chassis ..shoved a M51 turret on it and gave it a detuned 128mm gun ..no rules matey 
You want to put Abrams tracks on it ..do it..you want a full torsion bar suspension on it ..do it ..but that's actually been done in the RW so give it new fire power..like a 76mm hyper velocity gun ..but that's been done too.
Still tho mate tons of ideas still out there and plenty of twisted minds here to help inspire..trust me your gonna like it here 😉

[Old Wombat]

Very strange, I can see your later pics but not the original ones. 

Hopefully Chris will sort it when he comes on site tomorrow.

Same here.

From what I can see now, this is going to be an excellent build to keep my eye on, & "Oh, the joy of indy-link tracks!"    

[NARSES2]

Very strange, I can see your later pics but not the original ones. 

Hopefully Chris will sort it when he comes on site tomorrow.

Same here.

From what I can see now, this is going to be an excellent build to keep my eye on, & "Oh, the joy of indy-link tracks!"    

Sorry about that gents. I was in the middle of trying to sort something else out (which I couldn't do, at least easily) and forgot I had to authorise text and pictures separately 

Hope you can see them now ?

Chris

[Wardukw]

I can see them now Chris and I am now liking this post much more 
I've loved the Super Pershing since the first time I saw one and a ol mate got me to turn his 1/16th Tamiya M4 into one ...but a wiffy one using the M51 conversion set the Tamiya brought out.
Man I enjoyed that build  .

[Jakko]

Welcome to the nuthouse Jakko mate 

Thanks

eventually your gonna get bitten like I did and RW will bore the hell out of you..first hand experience here bud.

I think you're projecting yourself onto me there

"Oh, the joy of indy-link tracks!"    

I have a bit of a love–hate relationship with them ... The workable ones usually are too much work, but the non-workable ones are a pain in the arse to use (either add them before painting, which means it's a struggle to get paint everywhere you can see, or add them after painting when it's a struggle to get them on), and flexible tracks just don't sit right on most vehicles. Which altogether means that these days, I tend to go for workable tracks if I have a choice ... but I'm not stupid enough to get ones that are more work than they need to be — hence selling on the Takom M247's tracks

forgot I had to authorise text and pictures separately 

Hope you can see them now ?

It looks like it's fixed, my post no longer has "awaiting approval" thumbnails under it — thanks

With the model finished, I gave it a coat of primer from a rattle can:

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Actually from two: the engine deck is white but the rest of the model is grey because the white can was almost empty, yet I needed a white engine deck for:

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US Army tanks late in the Pacific campaign often had an oversize star on the engine deck for aerial recognition, and spraying that is going to be far easier than trying to get a decal to fit over an M4A3 engine deck Cutting the masking tape into that star shape was tricky, though. I put some tape onto a piece of glass and drew the star on it, but had to do that several times before I actually got it right. BTW, it doesn't go under the tools — I cut it to fit around them as I put it on the model.

That was followed by a coat of Vallejo olive drab (which is why I needed the primer: if I had used Tamiya or Mr. Aqueous paints, I would just have primed the engine deck white) and then field drab for highlighting the various "empty" areas:

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The reason for using field drab, which is a dirty greenish brown colour rather than green is because olive drab is not green The American paints from the Second World War fade to brown rather than green, so highlighting with a greenish brown works better than with olive green, IMHO.

That was followed by shading and highlighting:

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IIRC, the shading is thinned-down Games Workshop Sewer Smell — I mean Devlan mud, which is long OOP (and my bottle is now almost empty) but literally smells like a sewer ... Highlights are drybrushed Revell yellow olive and then light olive.

The star on the engine deck came out well, but needed a little retouching with white paint on a fine brush:

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For the spare tracks, I then put together some more RFM links blocks but with plastic rod for the pins and some strip and punched bolt heads for retaining them:

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The tracks themselves, I sprayed black with a rattle can:

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After that, I heavily drybrushed them with steel colours, but forgot to take a photo

[Wardukw]

Jakko mate trust me there's not projecting myself there ...before I really went down the wiffy hole I'd built over 200 models..planes first then armour..since then even my time in the army didn't stop my building armored vehicles.. freaking hundreds of em ..for me..for other ppl and I tell ya mate I got so bored I stopped building models for over 5yrs..didn't even touch one.
Before the break I'd build the odd wiffy but not having a home made it feel like a waste of time until me butt turned up here.
These ppl here are great man ..full of ideas and they given me a ton of help after what I now call The incident..your more than welcome to our world of nutters mate 👍
Oh by the way..bloody loving this build 😀 👏

[Pellson]

This is a VERY nice projekt indeed!! 

[Old Wombat]

Still watching!