By 1993 I was in Somalia, and in 1994 I was in Rwanda ... there are many stories I could tell from that little trip, but one of my more useful achievements was to photograph the Australian APC section in Kigali.
The vehicles were historic in that they were the first Australian armoured vehicles to wear the UN white livery:
My association with The Dark Continent endured and continues - looks like I'm heading back to film a doco early next year, but for a long time I just wanted to forget about Rwanda.
In the meantime I started accumulating M113s and bits for Aussie variants - would you believe I started back in 1990, and I am yet to build an Aussie carrier in any form!
I suppose part of the problem was and is the lack of a decent base kit, and the various Aussie updates varied from acceptable to awful.
I haven't run a micrometer over either, but the Tamiya and Academy M113s seem to capture the boxy dimensions of the vehicle well, and just about all parts are interchangeable. I bought one Italeri M113, and I doubt if it will ever be built, or even plundered for parts.
Moving right along, a few of you may have noticed that I reviewed a few Aussie armour bits recently - the Mousehouse fuel cells among them. Well, something stirred in me when I glued the cells in to a couple of hulls to see if they fitted - I then started hunting up some reference pix, and sorting through all those upgrades I had accumulated over the decades.
Before I knew it a couple of rudimentary interiors were in place, and I finally had m113 hulls sitting on wheels!
I suppose you could say it's therapy mixed mith sheer laziness, but I reckon the best way to break this carrier conundrum is to build a couple of the Rwanda vehicles - they operated from a base, were in clean and intact condition, and the white paint job should present few challenges.
I have resolved to do the M113A1 fitter and the T50 turreted hull 134192, which later went on to serve in East Timor and is now in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
The Academy fitter I aquired back in 1995 turned out not to be a bad kit. The crane needed to be shifted back a few mm to allow the driver's hatch to open, I fitted the Tamiya engine deck and chopped some of the Israeli items to represent Aussie boxes.
The Australian plastic water jerries, cargo hatch filter cover, cargo hatch bump stops and mesh covered indicator lights came from a venture named Armour Bits, which I'm not sure exists today, the aerials and the rear jerry mounts are Accurate Armour. I bent up a bit of brass as the mount for a vice from an ancient Tamiya accessories kit.
I only fitted a very basic interior because I was unsure of the layout (on the day I photographed the vehicles I was a little shell shocked by events the previous day ... in a sound state on mind I would have asked the crews to drop the ramps - oh well!). The water jerries are mounted on top of what are slabs of roughly cut mild steel, which form a counterweight for the crane, which allows the vehicle to swim. The steel jerries on the rear plate - which carried engine and transmission oils - are Italeri. The engine louvre mesh came from Mousehouse (stay tuned for a review!).
I added some plumbing mounts on the crane, and some hose mounts on the vehicle roof using brass tube.
There's still a few very minor bits to add, but the Fitter is tantalisingly close to becoming my first completed M113 ... alas, if I was going to put some paint in the gun, I though I'd better make a day of it, and started my 134192:
Again, I used an Academy hull and a Mousehouse fuel cell. Because I plan to have the cargo hatch open, I will need to make the interior more elaborate than the fitter. I Academy fuel cell just had to go - it looks ot be a scale 30cm too long! There will be a multitude of other sins - the standard kit seats being too high on the sponsons among them, but the detail level should be good enough for glimpses though the open top deck hatches (the rear hatch will be closed). Many Aussie carriers has rubber mats in the interior, and I represented this with several layers of very thin plasticard and liquid cement.
I sorted through no less than nine T50 turrets I had accumulated and various cargo hatches with the Australian filter cover - starting with the solid block Verlinden item I bought in 1991 - and the best of them was a nicely done hollow cast turret amd hatch from Aussie Armour - which is still marketed by Mousehouse.
What struck me was the huge variance in dimensions, but the biggest bugbear was that the T50 turret is not centralised on its pivot and has a distinct rear overhang - only Accurate Armour and Aussie Armour got it right.
Going though my photo files, it appears I don't have a snap of the T50 turret basket. I'll need to fashion one for 134192, as it will be visible through the cargo and turret hatches ... watch this space.
Anyway, I'm determined to get these two Aussie buckets complete, and maybe start a few more, so keep the requests for updates coming!
