Bronco has the M114A1 kit, but I wondered what the difference was between that and any older versions, besides the name?

Tyres, convoy light, stabilizing jack, not sure about the sights.
Scalemates M114A1 and M1A1 WW2 link lists what is available, as well as reviews of both.

Thanks for the heads up.

Check out TM 9-1025-200-12 for additional differences, like the panoramic telescope (M12A2C vs M12A27Q)..

H.P.

The M114a1 is kind of the oddball in the 155 group of howitzers. They never saw combat in the U.S. Military, but the M114 did (also often called M1a1). The difference between the two is the barrel length and a groove a couple inches from the muzzle. Never saw one in the flesh, and from what I heard the stateside Marines were the sole user. The M114/ late M1a1 use an elevating screw in the front jack, while the M1 used a gear and rack elevating system. Supposedly, there were two or three styles of front shields (all look similar to me). The old gun had a bare metal surface ontop the breech to place a level protractor. The later howitzers used a built in setup. Never used the level at anytime.
Internally, there are two different breech doors that look similar on the outside. The big difference was that the inside was hard chrome plated with a slightly rounder mushroom head. Not much rounder, but you can see it with the older and newer close by. These came into being sometime in late 67 or very early 68. I cannot tell you what the OEM attachment points look like, as everybody modified them. Same for the trail shifting spike and the end of the left trail. I've seen them as long as three feet and as short as eighteen inches. Mine was about twenty four inches long. Another oddity is under the carriage. There was a ring welded to the bottom that from what I was told only went to Vietnam. It was not on the gun I shot stateside! (of course the scholars at Sill called it a M1a1 I might add). In Vietnam, you shot 360 degrees, so you were shifting the azimuth often. The carriage sat on a jack stand, and never the wheels. Only time the tires touched the ground was to pull the gun out of the parapet. I have seen one gun shoot for a couple days with only one wheel attached! We had a battery in my battalion that did away with the shields to lighten the slung load under a chopper; plus they moved about every two weeks.
To build a proper 155 howitzer from the Vietnam era, you need to use the early metal barrel (do not paint it!!). Find the gun your going to build and do all the attachment points as they saw fit. I think the Bronco kit comes with the jack stand and ring under the carriage. Toss the cradle, as nobody used one. Rammer staff length is what your comfortable with. Ours was about five feet. The swab was nothing but an ax handle with a couple sand bags wrapped around it (ours). The issued swab lasted about six weeks, and there were no replacements. Water buckets usually were bomb fuse canisters or fifty call boxes in a pinch ( the big one off a tank). The AG would have a box of primers right under the trail behind him, but always had a half dozen in his hands.
A typical howitzer had an ammo bunker with about three hundred HE rounds fused up. Off to one side was another identical group of HE rounds, but these were all of a certain lot number and weighed exactly the same. There would often be two more sets of ready HE rounds outside the bunker on the opposite side of the parapet. Normally kept covered with the roof tarp from a truck. The WP, Illumination rounds, and Cofram rounds (mid to late spring of 68) were all kept in separate bunkers made out of sheet metal culverts and covered with two or three layers of sand bags.
Powder normally was kept in one bunker. One side was green bag, while the other was white bag. There were contact lots for shooting very close to friendlies. Powder and projos are never in the same bunker for safety reasons. Don't use a radio! Too easy to jam. Everything comes thru by field phone. There were odd ball tools that were rarely used, and kept in one place for everybody to use. Lastly, even unused fuses are kept away from everything. They are the first thing to blow up.
gary