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M60A1 in the Austrian Army, 1968

Introduction

I am a member of IPMS-Austria (www.ipms.at). This kit has been donated from the general distributor of Italeri Austria and I was asked to build it. The kit provides decals for an Austrian Army version.

The main question was, can this version can be built “out of the box” as promised or does anything need to be changed/added. To say it frankly, the answer is :“ an Austrian Army version cannot be built OOTB!”

It is not sufficient, as explained in the instruction, to omit the searchlight and smoke candles, paint the whole thing in Modelmaster 1712 and add the decals. The latter, which are incomplete too, represent a tactical markings which have been in use since 1973. Vehicles with such markings already had Austrian modifications mounted, especially the AEG searchlight. All these changes are not reflected in the kit.

The T142 track provided in the kit cannot be used for an Austrian M60A1. They used the T97E2 Rubber Chevron track. T142 tracks were used with the introduction of the M60A3.

But a competent modeller finds always a solution. In my case it was the fact, that Austrian M60A1 were kept in the original US configuration ( without searchlight ) between 1964-69. I simply had to find the appropriate decals and tracks from Revell’s M88. I could have used the individual tracks issued from AFV Club, but I did not want to spend much time on them.