A39 Tortoise

[Adam Durrant]

Picked up Meng’s kit of the A39 a while back. RB after market main gun and Besa barrels followed, set of Voyager PE has now also been obtained.

Designed to breach heavy fortifications, only a few examples were built. one was sent to Germany just as the war ended so never saw any action. One survives at Bovington, one other as a hulk on a military range.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/mNqBmvE.jpg?1[/img]

Going to do a "what if" type of build as if it had seen some active service.

No plans to start just yet, when I get a mental block of the FT-17 I’ll switch to this!

[Philipp Gross]

Whoops....totally meant to reply to this earlier, sorry

Great choice Adam, the Tortoise is a true beast of a tank...assault gun...whatever

Start anytime soon?

Philipp

[Peter Smith]

Here's my attempt at the same thing from last year. As we're in "what if" territory, I went for a theoretical MkIICS with a 4.5" gun for bunker-busting. 32pdr would have been pretty useless against Siegfried Line fortifications. US found that the M12 in direct fire was their best weapon here.

I also added a coincidence rangefinder and a Polsten cannon, and replaced the cupola BESAs with Brownings.

Just one observation/warning. Every other model I've seen still has the "Caution - Unarmoured" warning triangle on the right glacis. Only P1 as at Bovington had this: P2-6 were arnoured and also had the left side reloading/pistol port absent from P1.

[Adam Durrant]

Thanks Peter, I’m going to leave the armament as is but was thinking of adding armour to make it a true beast!

My plan is to start this when the FT-17 build finally does my head in Philipp

[Philipp Gross]

How about covering it in track links? Would look rather brütal

Philipp

[Adam Durrant]

How about covering it in track links? Would look rather brütal

Philipp

Was thinking along those lines as the kit provides more track links than are necessary. Was also thinking of some Field expedited protection from air attack...

[Philipp Gross]

British (and especially Polish) units used all the track links they could get their hands on, Sherman, Churchill and even Panther and Tiger tracks. Especially Churchill tracks look like oversized chainmail on the tank

You could get a lot more Tortoise track links if you don't assemble the top track run, which is completely hidden anyway.

Nice example of "foreign" track armour:


Philipp

[Adam Durrant]

Good idea, I still have most of a Friul set of Panther tracks, the ones that didn’t melt in the oven when I tried to expedite drying them (White metal melts at extremely low temperature I discovered).

[Adam Durrant]

Finally stalled on the FT-17 so made a start on this. Looks like some of the errors in this kit (especially the fit of the side skirts) may have been remedied as one of the sprues is a horrible shade of lime green where as all of the others are olive drab.

Fit so far has been good, just a little fiddly especially the 8 bogie assemblies. You really need to hold your tongue just right if you want them to be moveable.



Took most of a week to slowly put these together, out of the 7 sprue, 3 are for track links, 2 are devoted to the running gear, only two to the rest of the vehicle.

Managed to get the nose sorted this weekend, you can see the awful lime green parts from the "odd sprue out"



Redid the cast texture after sealing the join between the glacis and hull tub as in real life they are one giant casting. Wiring for the formation/convoy lights is provided, but none for the headlights. Added this with lead wire. The voyager PE set is nice, most of the bits they have chosen to upgrade are appropriate.

[Adam Durrant]

Just looked again at a walk around of the Bovington A39. This is not going to be a quick build. Lots of heavy cast texture to add, lots of weld lines missing etc. etc....sigh