Tuesday 25 January 2022

3 Royal Tank Regiment in 15mm - 'Hybrid' Sherman Firefly

With 5 Skytrex and 5 PSC models, I had a problem - I would have to mix manufacturers within a troop and, though the models match quite well, I thought that would be too much. I decided therefore to modify a spare Skytrex M4 by lengthening the hull a bit, creating new engine deck details and adding the extra armour panels on the turret and hull sides. Fairly quickly I realised that would be a lot of work for questionable results but it occurred to me that every PSC sprue came with two upper hulls and two turret top halves for 75mm and 17pdr variants so I had 5 spares and decided to mate one of them with Skytrex lower hull and running gear components and scratch build the rest of the bits.



This was actually quite straightforward, if a bit time consuming. The only real problem was the join between the bottom of the glacis and the hull front so I hid that behind a lot of stowage, taking inspiration from a picture showing a similar arrangement. The running gear - track components from the M4 are obviously shorter than those of the stretched M4A4 and the track type is the rubber-block version that was apparently less popular with the British but this isn't too noticeable unless you are looking for it and the completed model blends in OK at normal viewing distances.

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