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An LCM3 Adventure

The other small details/tools were modified from the original Italeri pieces either because they were really poorly molded (the bilge pump and hooks) or inaccurate (the ramp cable slide and the hull side lifting plates).

The side lifting plates are originally Eduard parts, which are accurate for earlier model ships, but later on they got reinforced with a second plate of steel over the upper part. Since this is how the ships at Maastricht had their lifting pates, I modified the Eduard parts to match.

After the hull’s putty had dried and was sanded smooth, it was also time to add the hull details. The bilge pump outlets were made of 0.010 sheet styrene punched out with a punch and die, and the exhaust covers were made from the same sheet cut and bent to shape.

The arrangement of the outlets is something that has a lot of manufacturing variation. Sometimes there was another bilge outlet in front of the ones I added, sometimes they are different sizes, and sometimes they are in slightly different positions. I added mine based on the images of the LCM3s being transported by Dragon Wagons.

The other details were added now as well, including the cable slide. This also tends to change location based on manufacturer and if it’s an early or later model. I added mine based on the Dragon Wagon images.

The Gun Mounts

I’m going to be blunt here: The Italeri LCM3 gun mounts, as well as the Verlinden and Trumpeter versions, are terrible. They look nothing like the actual mounts and are simplified to the point of being jokes.

Technically I could have gotten away without them. There are many images of LCM3 without the mounts installed, particularly during transport. Even in the image I was basing my LCM3 off of they aren’t installed. But they are on several other of the same batch of LCM3s loaded in Maastricht, and so I decided to take on the challenge of building accurate versions.

What follows is NOT modeling for the feint of heart. Consider yourself warned. During WW2 the LCM3 carried what were known as Mk 21-1 pedestal single mount machine gun mounts. They were lightened versions of the Mk 21-0 with slightly smaller and thinner gun shields.

While several wonderful images of the real mounts are available here:

AA Single Mounts Live links And even for sale, finding plans and dimensions for the mount was very difficult. I tried extrapolating from those images but the dimensions fluctuated too much as most of the images were taken at angles.

However I soon found myself lucky when I stumbled onto the book ‘Weapon mounts for secondary armaments’ by the US Army ordinance corp. On page 473 of this massive 1200 page book is a full side schematic of the Mk 21-1!

As a note, if you can find this book get it! It’s a fantastic reference. It has almost every secondary weapon mount used by just about every major army from WW1 up through 1957, including all sorts of experimental mounts. It’s truly a glorious reference.

The only flaw, unfortunately, is that while it has the side-view plans, it doesn’t have the exact measurements of the mount. So I based mine on the distance between the mount points for the 50 cal, which is a known standard, scaled down my plans from there, and went to town.