I'm currently building Academy's M10. Chose Academy over AFV as the lesser of two evils , and Edouard makes an Academy dedicated PE set. I find that when the turret is at the 12 o'clock position it is impossible to open either the driver or co-driver hatches as the mantlet and barrel block them. It is also very difficult fitting a figure with his head sticking out. Is this Academy's fault by making the turret too long, mounting it too far forward, or by making a mis-proportioned mantlet? Or is this the fact in reality, that these hatches could only be opened when the turret is trained at the 10 or 2 o'clock positiones? In which case the driver and co-driver seem to be expendables if their M10 gets hit . I've checked this against drawings (which are usually suspect anyway) and Academy's mantlet does seem to project a bit too far forward compared to some of them. Does anyone have any comments on this?
I would, of course prefer a Dragon M10, but they seem to be too busy producing every single M4 and Panther ever built!

Steven Zaloga's book on Modelling US Army Tank Destroyers of World War II has a drawing that shows the relationship between the Academy, the AFV, and an actual M10 turret, not counting the mantlet. The Academy turret is narrower and longer than it should be, the AFV wider and shorter. Neither is perfect.

I'm a bit claustrophobic and I wouldn't want to man those positions in any case. If the turret was trained just a little bit off one or both of those hatches couldn't open in reality.

Biggles,

You've hit on a common problem in tank design - quite a few had this sort of interference! The hinges on those hatches are badly moulded in the Academy kit, and should slant forward at a more dramatic angle so the hatches swing forward as they open. Even then, on the real thing the clearance was tight, and unless the barrel was raised the crew could be trapped. Rotate the turret by a few degrees and certainly one of the hatches would be blocked...

A related problem is that when opened, the hatches block the gun from traversing! (Same as on late "big hatch" Shermans...) Even better, if the turret was turned and then rotated back to 12 o'clock with the hatch open, it could push the hatch closed with unpleasant effects on the occupant...

Tom

This is what I feared. I have Zaloga's book on modeling the M10 which is what prompted me to buy the Academy model over the AFV. Guess I'll return to studying photo references to better understand the problem of hatches vs. mantlet. Thanks.

The fit and finish on the Academy M10 is nicer than AFV Club's but the Academy kit's hull dimensions are far, far worse (it's shape was "adjusted" to accommodate an electric motor and battery packs for the Asian home market, and it's far too tall, throwing off all the angles).
AFV Club's upper hull is better, but the lower hull has an oddly shaped transmission housing (you can swipe a spare one from any of several Dragon or Tasca Sherman kits). The suspension isn't very well done either, compared to Dragon, Tasca, or even Academy.
What we really is for one of the makers to offer some all-new US tank destroyers, as the existing M10, M36 and M18 kits are all in need of substantial corrections.

This isn't the old Academy kit - I wouldn't touch them with a 10' pole . Mine is one of a new series produced in 2003, I believe. Academy released an early version with wedge counter-weights, a Firefly, and a late 'Duckbill' counterweight version. Mine is the late version. Absolutely no holes or compartments for motorization.

Sad to say, that is still the kit I'm talking about. They have swapped out the motorized lower tub, but the upper hull is still too deep, and the upper deck too narrow, crowding the drivers' hatches.
The 1980's Academy M10 kit you refer to was an unlicensed clone of the 1973 Tamiya kit, itself a halfhearted update of their 1969 vintage M36 kit. Those kits were drastically out of scale, and the apparent scale varied according to what dimension you measured. Hulls were far too long, and the suspension was oversized, at roughly 1/32nd scale (we used to cannibalize them to update our Monogram Shermans).
The 2003 Academy kits were indeed all-new, and not nearly as bad, but still out of proportion, with poor hull angles. The AFV Club kit released the same year has a better upper hull shape, but has a host of problems of its own, mostly on the lower hull.
Whichever kit is selected, one can choose either to do a nice build and just mitigate a few of the errors, or one can bite the bullet and invest a lot of time and effort on major surgery and kitbashing. The US armor community had very high hopes when these kits were announced, and we were bitterly disappointed when both manufacturers fell short. It seems strange, given the large number of surviving vehicles to photograph and measure. In the longer term, one can only hope that one of the other players will jump in with a new kit.