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Tasca M4A3E8

painting

18. I had been checking various pictures of M4A3E8's in the European Theater of Operations near the end of the war and finally settled on this one. This particular tank served with the U.S. 4th Armoured division during the Battle of the Bulge. The M4A3E8 entered service during the Battle of the Bulge and this example is a fairly new one. Of particular interest is the painted out star on the turret, although the original white one remains on the hull; you can also see the remains of the sand shields on the rear of the tank, looking like narrow flaps. As I understand it these tanks were delivered with the sand shields fitted, but due to snow build up and the difficulty of getting access to the running gear for repairs they were quickly discarded. I built these shields from plastic sheet.

19 – 24. Here are some shots with the basecoat on. I did not use any primer on this tank other than the subtle surface texturing I did on the turret sides, hull sides, glacis and final drive with some diluted Mr. Surfacer 500. I took a page out of Steve Zaloga's Osprey books on modelling the Sherman Tank, in which he states that today's acrylic paints are so good that you really don't need to prime in most cases. Additionally, primer can sometimes cover up some of the surface details.

In terms of painting the tank itself I wanted to exhibit some Olive Drab colour variations on various surfaces and so did some colour modulation by spraying the horizontal and upper vertical surfaces using Tamiya's XF62 Olive Drab mixed with XF60 Dark yellow in a 60/40 ratio. For the darker lower areas I used a 70/30 and an 80/20 mix of XF62/XF60. Where I had more of a stark or clearly defined transition between the darker and lighter shaded areas I lightly misted the area with the lighter colour to tie both colours in.

The rear fenders for the sand shields were fashioned out plastic card stock. The tow cable and ends are from Eureka XXL ER-3503. I also added a resin tow cable retainer, which is near the front left driver's hatch, as well as a towing clamp near the rear left side to hold down the tow cable, both from Formations.

25. I also finished off the .50cal machine gun: in the photo it is not glued on but I threw it on the tank to see what it looked like. M4A3's had a bit of a different set up for loading the .50cal ammo into the gun, as I learned from John Guld and Tim Streeter's excellent site Modelling the US Army in World War 2. The ammo box lid had to be removed before it could inserted into the D80030 (6580030) ammo box holder. I hollowed out the appropriate ammo box where the ammo would be fed from, then cut off a small piece of the ammo belt that comes with the kit and put it in the hollowed out area, my goal here being to make the ammo box look like it was full. I then cut a longer strip and bent it using hot steam from a kettle, as per the Tasca instructions, to serve as the portion of the belt being fed into the machine gun, then glued it in place. I think it looks pretty good, but let me know what you think. I painted the machine gun in a greyish colour to represent the grey parkerized finish that was common on WWII .50 Cal MG's.

For the commander's hatch I added the locking latch with some plastic stock and photo etch from the Aber buckle set. The periscope housing is also a photo etched piece from Aber's Sherman set.