Stuart Vs (M3A3) were used by all Canadian armoured units, whether in Italy or NWE. Every armoured unit had a recce troop or squadron with Stuarts in them. In Italy, the Stuart Vs were kept until the units moved from Italy to NW Europe in January 1945 when all of the Stuart Vs (without turrets) were swapped for Stuart VIs (M5A1) _with_ turrets. And those turrets were retained.

For units that went into combat in NWE (1st Cdn Army, 2nd Cdn Arm'd Brigade, 2nd Cdn Corps), they had Stuart Vs with turrets initially, but by fall of 1944, these were swapped out for turreted Stuart VIs. Monty ordered that the turrets be retained, so retained they were in NWE units.

As to which units had them, all armoured units would have some amount of Stuarts in their recce force. You can look at the ORBATs at Armoured Acorn (http://armouredacorn.com/orbatsmain.html) for a more precise answer. Once you know the unit you want, you can establish whether it was the recce troop of the HQ squadron or within one of the recce squadrons of a recce regiment. Note that Stuarts would not be found in the armoured car based recce units for infantry formations.

Once the Stuart Vs started to come out of service in the front line recce units, they did start to show up more in auxilliary roles, like ambulance, FOO vehicles, commander's chargers, ammo carriers, etc. For those, you can't rely upon the orders of battle, you need to base the model more directly on a photo as these secondary users almost always made specific mods to suit their purposes. Almost always these vehicles had their turrets removed.

HTH

Paul

The interior of the M3 series was very different than the M5 series so the Verlinden set won't help you, I'm afraid (and the M3A3 was somewhat different that the M3 or M3A1).

Accurate Armour does make a resin Stuart V Recce set that you could use. If you have even moderate scratchbuilding skills, all you'd really need is the tranny & differential as the rest is quite simple to cobble together. AA might sell you those separately for significantly less.

Also, do you want a turretless M3 or a turretless M3A3. We used both and they _are_ different. There's a nice photo of a turretless M3 being used as an arty FOO vehicle in Holland in the spring of 1945, looooong after it was out of regular service in the armoured regiments.

Paul

OK, first of all I'm sorry to say that the USMC never used the M3A3. The M3A3 was never used in combat by any American units. The Marines used the M3 and the M3A1, but not the M3A3.

Second, to buy the AA stuff, go to AA's web site. They have two versions:

http://www.accurate-armour.com/ShowProduct.cfm?manufacturer=0&category=5&subcategory=38&product=84

http://www.accurate-armour.com/ShowProduct.cfm?manufacturer=0&category=5&subcategory=38&product=85

These are listed as "early" and "late" but recce Stuarts were never as cut & dried as that., They were made in a number of in-theatre depots and were not built to any specific standard. The best that can be said about these two is that they are two different more common configurations.

They are designed for the Tamiya M5A1 kit and so have a lot of parts you don't really need if you have the AFV M3A3. Accurate Armour may sell you the parts that don't include the hull & tracks and that may save you a few bucks.

I think there are also M3 series interior sets and if you had the tranny, differential and seats from one of those, you could scratch build the rest without too much trouble. There are a couple features of the M3A3 kit that are already set up to easily make a Stuart V Recce.

Be careful using the Verlinden M5A1 interior in the AFV kits as the Tamiya kit has dimensional differences from the AFV kit and a number of the interior parts may need significant trimming or filling to fit.

Paul