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The Universal Carrier – Life in the Old Dog Yet!

Introduction

This is a short article on one of my favourite vehicles the Universal Carrier. It looks at the use of the old Tamiya kit, some home improvements and features several of the Resicast conversion sets.

One of the most widely used vehicles of World War II the Universal Carrier saw service in every theatre of operations. It was loved by some and hated by others, but it proved a remarkably versatile vehicle and was adapted to many roles not all of which it was designed for.

The original concept was for a vehicle to move stores and equipment around the battle field. The vehicle was soon adopted as a primary mover for a machine gun team and its ammunition and despite all the other uses and functions it fulfilled this remained its primary function.

It is for me one of the most interesting and uniquely British vehicles of World War II and a lot of fun to build.

The first of the builds shows the Tamiya kit in a pretty basic format. The main thing wrong with this 30 year old kit is the tracks. Resicast came to the rescue here with a fairly inexpensive set of replacement tracks including replacement drive wheels with the correct number of teeth. The other thing wrong is the thickness of the frontal armour plate but if you can live with that or thin it down well you can get a fairly decent kit from the original without too much expense.

The first of the builds represents a carrier from the 5th Battalion Coldstream Guard, Guards Armoured Division June 1944. It was built using the basic kit with Resicast replacement tracks and one of the Resicast excellent No 19 wireless sets. This was a re-cycled kit form some years ago.

Vehicle 1