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M4A3E8 'Thunderbolt'

Turret construction

Step 9 shows the sub-assemblies of the turret hatches and the main gun and mantlet. The hatches are straightforward although it might be advisable to paint the commander’s all round vision cupola (B29) before fitting the clear plastic vision blocks (C7).

I chose to use the turned aluminium barrel instead of the two-piece plastic barrel. There is no easy way to fit the muzzle brake (B30) to the aluminium barrel. I used CA glue and held it in place while it dried. I made the mistake of fitting the gun to the mantlet first and then gluing on the muzzle brake. This makes it hard to judge the angle of the muzzle brake to the mantlet so my advice is attach the muzzle brake to the gun first and then attach the gun to the mantlet.

I decided not to use the etched brass .30 calibre mount and instead used a mount from Academy’s US machine gun set. I also used the .30 calibre the .50 calibre and mount from this set instead of the kit options. Thunderbolt VII had an early style turret with the split hatch so I used this turret and not the one with the oval loader’s hatch. I left off the add on turret armour (D4) until the painting stage. Thunderbolt VII had a .50 calibre installed as its co axial machine gun so I cut the barrel from one in the very useful Academy set and glued it in place. The angle iron brackets on the back of the turret for holding the .50 calibre while travelling are very thick and can be sanded down to a more scale thickness.

Step 12

This shows the mating of the upper and lower hulls. I chose not to glue them together as I want to install a crew and a rudimentary interior later. The add on armour for the transmission is shown as one piece but my references show it as two separate pieces so I cut it in half and roughened up the edges to represent the torch-cut surface. The bolts (Q29) on this piece are tiny and I knew my pudgy fingers would drop them and they would be gobbled up by the carpet gremlins. I got around this by cut ting a piece of sprue with the bolts still attached away from the larger sprue. I used the sprue as a guide to glue each bolt in position and then trimmed the bolt off the sprue.

At this stage I gave the lower hull and suspension a coat of olive drab and the tires a coat of flat black. When dry I snap fitted the tires to the wheels and glued the suspension to the hull. As I was modelling my kit as being on a flat surface I made sure the suspension was level and then applied some CA glue to the rocker arms to lock them in place.

The magic tracks go together easily. Mine had slight knockout marks which were easily removed with a sanding stick. I assembled them in runs and then applied glue. After a few minutes I shaped them around the sprocket and idler. When dry I glued the runs together so that each track was made up of two pieces. I then painted these in a mixture of dark brown and steel.

I gave the upper hull and turret a coat of Tamiya olive drab and when this dried I gave the side armour where the Thunderbolt VII decal was to go a coat of Future (Klear) polish. Because the fender braces are now over the armour I had to trim the decal to fit. It went on easily over the Future and when dry I gave it another coat of Future. For the large star on the turret armour I used a stencil from Lion Roar instead of the Kit decal. When the Decals were set I gave the whole kit a few washes of Vallejo olive drab mixed with yellow ochre.

The photos I have show Thunderbolt VII as very mucky, so I’m afraid I went overboard with the pastels. The great thing about pastels is that if you don’t like the effect then you can just wash them off! The photos included with the review show the different finishes. I will do further work on weathering and stowage and other details such as the rear lights and vision blocks but this is where I left the kit for this review. (In some of the photos the upper hull may sit a little high, this is because it is not glued to the lower hull to facilitate installing a crew.)

in Conclusion

This was a great kit to build straight from the box and although I replaced the tools and turret MG’s, the only part that needs to be added to the kit to make an accurate Thunderbolt VII is the coaxial MG which can be had from the Academy set. While the suspension may look daunting, with a little patience and good references it can be put together quite easily. I recommend this kit highly and have plans to build several more!

My thanks to Dragon Models Ltd. For the sample!