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- Apr 28, 2018
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- Jakko
About five years ago, I bought Meng’s A39 Tortoise kit.
This is one that really existed, a British superheavy tank, though it went no further than six prototypes built after the Second World War was over, one of which survives at Bovington:
(Wikipedia)
I got as far as assembling the running gear onto the lower hull (minus tracks) and doing some work on the upper hull and machine-gun turret, such as removing moulding seams and restoring/applying more cast texture with putty.
Then it stalled in favour of other models …
As you may notice, though, the model isn’t quite the same as the Bovington tank. This is because when I was looking over the kit and wondering how exactly I was going to build it, I decided to make a Tortoise Mk. 2 out of it — which is entirely fictitious, of course, making it a “what if the Tortoise had been adopted and updated in the 1950s”-model. This is why I filled the hole for the Besa bow machine gun and replaced the Besas in the machine-gun turret by M1919 Browning barrels from AFV Club Centurion kits. I’m still debating which other modifications might have been made, which probably requires a little more research into when exactly Centurion got upgraded with certain features like a spotlight, external fuel tank etc.
I’m going to finish my M29C Weasel first, though, so don’t expect much or any work on this model just yet
This is one that really existed, a British superheavy tank, though it went no further than six prototypes built after the Second World War was over, one of which survives at Bovington:
(Wikipedia)
I got as far as assembling the running gear onto the lower hull (minus tracks) and doing some work on the upper hull and machine-gun turret, such as removing moulding seams and restoring/applying more cast texture with putty.
Then it stalled in favour of other models …
As you may notice, though, the model isn’t quite the same as the Bovington tank. This is because when I was looking over the kit and wondering how exactly I was going to build it, I decided to make a Tortoise Mk. 2 out of it — which is entirely fictitious, of course, making it a “what if the Tortoise had been adopted and updated in the 1950s”-model. This is why I filled the hole for the Besa bow machine gun and replaced the Besas in the machine-gun turret by M1919 Browning barrels from AFV Club Centurion kits. I’m still debating which other modifications might have been made, which probably requires a little more research into when exactly Centurion got upgraded with certain features like a spotlight, external fuel tank etc.
I’m going to finish my M29C Weasel first, though, so don’t expect much or any work on this model just yet
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