Hi All.

I was wondering if we will see other French variants of the Hotchkiss H39 kit from Bronco?
There are plenty of German variants planned but no mention of the H38 or H35. The review of the kit at PMMS doesn't mention any extra bits on the sprues for the H38.
There is a Brach Models conversion set for the H35 which looks very good but is pretty pricey. If Bronco intend doing an H35 down the track I would rather wait for that.
Does anyone have any inside info?

Cheers,
TimTam27

Keeping the flame alive for early-war, non-German modelling

From the list on New Kit News on PMMS, it doesn't look like Bronco will be doing anything about an H-35 in the near future. Plan B might involve a kit-bash with the Heller H-35 upper hull and a Trumpeter lower hull to correct the ground clearance issues Heller have. You'd have to use Heller wheels too as the H-35 has rubber-tyred road wheels, while the H-39 has all-steel wheels. The smaller bits from the Heller model like like hooks for the cupola and mounts for the towing hooks would also be needed. I've seen Heller H-35s for less than £10 so it wouldn't be too pricey.

BTW I've wondered where the H-38 designation came from and this article from Wikipedia seems to have an answer. The H-39 in the picture at the top of the page is the one at the IDF museum at Latrun and was apparently restored using the Heller model as a guide.....


Hotchkiss

Brach Model makes a resin conversion to backdate Bronco's H-39 to a H-35. There is a good review on PMMS, but Terry does not allow direct links, so this is as close as I can get you:

http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/brach/bm041.htm

Oh yeah, I love the early war armour. Much more interesting than late war German subjects. And with the new stuff like Tamiya's Char B1 coming out I reckon that the whole armour scene will shift towards the 1939/40 period. In fact, I'm betting that the next smart kit from Dragon will be an early British Cruiser and not another Tiger 1. :-)

But it looks like there is little point being optimistic about a Bronco H35/38 in the near future. A you suggest my best bet might be to steal bits from another kit to make the earlier Hotchkiss tanks. Would have been nice to buy a ready-to-go kit though.

I was both alarmed and amused to hear that a museum used a model kit as reference for the restoration of a real vehicle. Fraught with danger I would have thought.

Cheers,
TimTam27

Hi David and Tim,

Couldn't agree more. I'd like to see a lot more of the early armour particularly the Vickers Light Tank and some of the early Armoured Cars like the RR.

I like the early Frence Armour also - more wishful thinking LOL, LOL.

Cheers

Al

Edit:

I see Bronco have 3 new versions of the Centurion listed for future release and the Lc/33 Italian Tankett (also a Chinese version). So there's one early vehicle anyway.