Australien M3 Lee 1/35 Takom finished

[The Chaos]

Ready for painting.

[buzzbomb]

Nicely together. 

[Old Wombat]

  

[Jakko]

Looking pretty good. One question, though: is the figure holding the hatch? Because otherwise it would not stand up like that. Both of its doors are just on simple hinges, so the upper part would hang vertically while the lower part will fall to be horizontal.

[The Chaos]

Primer on it.

[The Chaos]

Looking pretty good. One question, though: is the figure holding the hatch? Because otherwise it would not stand up like that. Both of its doors are just on simple hinges, so the upper part would hang vertically while the lower part will fall to be horizontal.

Hello yes the men holding the hatch and for it i make a handle on the innersite of the hatch.

[Jakko]

"How is this a what-if model?"

"It has this hatch handle that the real thing doesn't! See?"

[The Chaos]

Yes a What if becouse i dont cant find Infos that the Australians want a Late M3 Lee with MG Coupla and the Grant Tracks in Combat.

The use only the Normal Lee´s with Rubber tracks and Comandant Coupla most  in Traning.

Preshading

[Old Wombat]

To the best of my knowledge, the Australian Lees, like the British ones, all lost their machinegun turrets very early on & many were modified with the British Grant turret (along with M3 Grants bought as such from the get-go) & none were used in combat.

The Lee's/Grant's role when they arrived was national defence, then the Australian experience of jungle fighting showed that the Matilda II was the best thing available for what they needed a tank for, so the Lees/HGrants stayed in Australia as training tanks while the venerable Matildas slugged it out in the jungle..

[Jakko]

Yes a What if becouse i dont cant find Infos that the Australians want a Late M3 Lee with MG Coupla and the Grant Tracks in Combat.

They never used any Grants or Lees in combat, except for exactly three M3A5 Lees fitted with M1 dozer blades Looking through David Doyle's M3 Lee/Grant: The Design, Production and Service of the M3 Lee Medium Tank, the foundation of America's tank industry, there are exactly two photos of Lees in Australian service but both have the split-hatch cupola. The book says Australia received 255 Lees (M3, M3A2, M3A3 and M3A5), and that these all got the hatch instead of the machine-gun turret. A Lee with WD-212 tracks would not be a big stretch of the imagination, of course: maybe the T41s wore down and needed to be replaced?

[The Chaos]

Thanks.   

Color Modulation

[Rick Lowe]

Substituting the Commanders' Split Hatch for the m.g. cupola seems to have been pretty common, as the Military Modelling article on the British Lees in Burma had the same mod.

Model is coming along nicely.

[Old Wombat]

Substituting the Commanders' Split Hatch for the m.g. cupola seems to have been pretty common, as the Military Modelling article on the British Lees in Burma had the same mod.

Model is coming along nicely.

That's because no-one with a brain liked the mg turret!   

[Jakko]

The British certainty didn't want that turret, which is why they had the Americans put a split hatch on the Grant turret instead. Lees in Burma could have either, though, from photos in David Doyle's book — pages 425, 427 and 429 have good photos of Lees with a machine-gun turret but also British 4-inch smoke generator dischargers, but between these are photos of various Lees with split-hatch cupolas, too.

[The Chaos]

Detailed painting  compledet.