Picked up the AFV Club M728 yesterday. Looks good. The new turret has toned down the very rough finish.
Some notes from my pics of the 25 Div 65th E A-60 M578. The kit provides two 25th Div taro insignia. But the left side insignia is not the 25th Div Taro patch but the 65th E insignia. B-60 has a black star on the turret so I believe A-60 did too. At this point the white stars on the rear fenders had been overpainted with black, but probably due to flexing, the white was exposed. A-60 did not have the plastic cover over the gun mantle., but B-60 did.






Only A-60 had the insignia painted on the turret but B-60 had the tow cables heads painted yellow. I think that A-60 might not have retained the yellow and black markings on the dozer blade by the time I took these pictures. That's probably why I don't have a pic of the front of A-60's blade.
The 29th Bde 227th E E-51 M578 has the tow cable heads and lift rings on the hull painted white, but the blade is not painted out. I don't think that they painted any insignia on the turret. I only had a few frames of film left when I took these photos, so I couldn't take as many as I wished.
I have some 3/4 Cav M551 pics taken that day that I should upload. At this time, the 25th Div had only two brigades so they had only 2/3rd slices of each unit. So the 3/4 Cav had only two troops rather than three.

Grant

thanks for posting your photos, keep them coming as you can never have enough good reference pictures.

I was wondering when and where you took the photographs?

Schofield Barracks 1975 or 1976. I went with ex-lance corporal Marty Swanson. He was taking photos, too. He was an extraordinary modeler in Hawaii during the 70s. Medically retired from the Corps due to wounds suffered in Nam. Talks with a growl because of that. Great guy.

Grant

I think that some, maybe most of the M728 conversions might have used the early turrets without the cheek filets and the thickened turret ring. You'd have to do some filing as maybe the only the first Tamiya M60A1 kit had the old style turret. The updated Tamiya, Academy and ESCI turrets all have the thicker turret ring. If you might not be clear on this, the bottom of the turret should have an undercut on the sides. If the turret bottom has a vertical edge, then it's the later or modified turret.
I think that the 25 Div ones had the early turrets.

This is A-60. The SN appears to be 09A34467.

I located my slides and they were taken March 1975, probably during the third week of the month. The 29th Bde 227th E * E-51 M728 was 09A3370 in white.
I need a magnifier to check my slide of B-60 to find the SN.

The shot of E-51 shows the old smaller chin filet.


Here is an M728 turret illustrating the undercut, from the M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle Walk Around Page at Prime Portal.
http://data3.primeportal.net/recovery/greg_smith/m728_cev/images/m728_cev_47_of_78.jpg

The one in SVN has the later turret. Credit Tanks Being Tanks Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/tanksbeingtanks/photos/pcb.1955282101197192/1955280634530672/?type=3&theater

Grant