I’m nearly finished with building an M4A3 (76) HVSS, so I guess it’s almost time to start on the next one:
[ATTACH]407269[/ATTACH]
As a bit of history, in early 1944, the Americans figured they needed a heavily armoured “assault tank” — which the British had been telling them for about a year or so at that point. They decided to add some extra armour plate to the hull of their standard medium tank, the M4A3 (the later version with steep glacis plate, big hull hatches and “wet” ammo stowage bins). To go on top of this, they quickly designed a semi-new turret based on the one selected for the 76-mm-armed M4s, but again with thicker armour and carrying the standard 75-mm gun M3. These tanks were not ready in time for the Normandy landings, as all 254 were produced in May, June and July at Fisher Tank Arsenal in Flint, Michigan, USA, and then took a few months to get shipped over to Europe, so they only appear on photos dating from the autumn of 1944 at the earliest. In early 1945, about a hundred tanks were re-armed with the 76-mm gun in field workshops, which was easy enough because the gun mount was almost the same as in the 76-mm tanks.
And a side note, that these tanks are properly designated “M4A3E2”, unlike the Shermans with the later suspension that people habitually call “M4A3E8”. The E indicates an experimental variant, and the M4A3E8 was just that: when it went into production, it was standardised and lost the “E8”. The M4A3E2, however, was never actually standardised but ordered as a series of “experimental” vehicles, to avoid bureaucracy for what was seen as a very necessary tank to get into service.
So what do you get in the box?
[ATTACH]407270[/ATTACH][ATTACH]407271[/ATTACH][ATTACH]407272[/ATTACH][ATTACH]407273[/ATTACH][ATTACH]407274[/ATTACH]
As seems to be typical for Asuka (from the four kits of theirs I have, all Shermans), there are a lot of smallish sprues with detail parts, plus some larger ones with the main bits. The whole kit design is very modular, allowing them to produce kits of different versions by swapping out some sprues for others needed for the variant in question.
One thing I noticed is that the sprues with the wheels and suspension bogies are different from those I got with the M4A4 kit: those had dish-shaped wheels (officially the D52861) where this kit has the “closed spoke” type (D52876) in their place — though the backs for the dish-shaped wheels are still on the sprue. As I like the dish-shaped wheels more, I’ll use these spares from those earlier kits instead:
[ATTACH]407275[/ATTACH]
Also, there are two full sprues for the cupola, periscopes and headlamp glass, one green and one clear (I took the green cupola out for my HVSS model, though) and two more of these sprues with more periscopes, both green and clear.
[ATTACH]407269[/ATTACH]
As a bit of history, in early 1944, the Americans figured they needed a heavily armoured “assault tank” — which the British had been telling them for about a year or so at that point. They decided to add some extra armour plate to the hull of their standard medium tank, the M4A3 (the later version with steep glacis plate, big hull hatches and “wet” ammo stowage bins). To go on top of this, they quickly designed a semi-new turret based on the one selected for the 76-mm-armed M4s, but again with thicker armour and carrying the standard 75-mm gun M3. These tanks were not ready in time for the Normandy landings, as all 254 were produced in May, June and July at Fisher Tank Arsenal in Flint, Michigan, USA, and then took a few months to get shipped over to Europe, so they only appear on photos dating from the autumn of 1944 at the earliest. In early 1945, about a hundred tanks were re-armed with the 76-mm gun in field workshops, which was easy enough because the gun mount was almost the same as in the 76-mm tanks.
And a side note, that these tanks are properly designated “M4A3E2”, unlike the Shermans with the later suspension that people habitually call “M4A3E8”. The E indicates an experimental variant, and the M4A3E8 was just that: when it went into production, it was standardised and lost the “E8”. The M4A3E2, however, was never actually standardised but ordered as a series of “experimental” vehicles, to avoid bureaucracy for what was seen as a very necessary tank to get into service.
So what do you get in the box?
[ATTACH]407270[/ATTACH][ATTACH]407271[/ATTACH][ATTACH]407272[/ATTACH][ATTACH]407273[/ATTACH][ATTACH]407274[/ATTACH]
As seems to be typical for Asuka (from the four kits of theirs I have, all Shermans), there are a lot of smallish sprues with detail parts, plus some larger ones with the main bits. The whole kit design is very modular, allowing them to produce kits of different versions by swapping out some sprues for others needed for the variant in question.
One thing I noticed is that the sprues with the wheels and suspension bogies are different from those I got with the M4A4 kit: those had dish-shaped wheels (officially the D52861) where this kit has the “closed spoke” type (D52876) in their place — though the backs for the dish-shaped wheels are still on the sprue. As I like the dish-shaped wheels more, I’ll use these spares from those earlier kits instead:
[ATTACH]407275[/ATTACH]
Also, there are two full sprues for the cupola, periscopes and headlamp glass, one green and one clear (I took the green cupola out for my HVSS model, though) and two more of these sprues with more periscopes, both green and clear.
(They’re both still unfinished, largely because I can’t find a good way to do the flail chains.)
I also don’t have any in my spares box, so I now have the fun prospect of scratchbuilding a replacement.
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