Following on from his review of the Late Production variant, Jan Etal tackles DML''s new Early variant of the Japanese Chi Ha in Braille Scale.

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

Great review , thanks
Now Dragon , how about up scaling this to 1/35th ?
Oh , and work on kit instructions

Super informative review Jan. It answered a lot of questions I had but also brought a couple more to mind. Would you like the questions in this thread or the blog one?

Regards,
AJ

@barkingdigger - Tom, thanks for getting this review up so quickly.

@goldnova72 - Jim, I'm very glad that you liked the review and appreciate the comment. It's hard to figure out if one is providing the type of review that people find informative if you get no feedback. As for a 1/35 version, I think that it'll take more than just scaling up this kit. It appears that Dragon's latest 1/72 offerings are actually an offshoot of their increasing commitment to 1/72 diecast pre-assembled releases (hence all the details that used to be individual parts that are now moulded in place). As for the Dragon instructions, this appears to be an ongoing issue with their kits in all scales.

@AJB - Thanks AJ, as I state above, feedback is very much appreciated. As for your questions about the kit, if you don't see an answer in the review, please ask away in the Type 97 (Early) Blog. I'll be going into more detail about things during the finishing process.

Cheers,
Jan

@tread_geek – Jan,

Excellent review of this WWII Japanese model tank kit. Been following your build log and hadn’t noticed just how small and thin the supplied DS tracks were until I read this review.

A 30-ton tank, like this tank you reviewed, would be very small by comparison to say a Sherman tank (whose weight I don't know?) in the same scale. And the tracks would be even smaller yet. However they are very well represented in this scale as viewed in your photographs. Perhaps you could throw in a coin by the rear idlers and tracks just to give us an idea of just how well detailed and small these parts really are?

Will have to add this one to the stash for a future build.

Eddy

Thanks Eddy and I am glad that you are finding the build of this diminutive beast interesting. IF you check out the thread for the Late version you'll find some commentary on the tracks and the issues that they present.




30 TON? The Japanese at the time could only wish for that. In fact, I rather disagree with the fact that they call this a "medium" tank. The weight of the Chi Ha's varied from just over 14 tons to an all up of 15.8 tons for the version with the 47mm gun. Compared to a Panzer III at 22+ tons or the early Shermans at 29+ tons and it's more a light than a medium, in my mind. Here's a couple of pictures from the "Late" thread to show the difference between a Chi Ha and the Dragon M4A2 "Tarawa" Sherman.





I hope this gives you and others an appreciation of the size of these Type 97 tanks. Just in passing, many consider the US Stuart a light tank and it weighted in at 15 tons but had almost double the armour thickness of the Chi Ha.

Cheers,
Jan