Ever since the Academy kit came out of the M-3 Honey I knew that I had to do the Tamiya and Academy kits side by side so I could see just what twenty five or so years of kit improvements had been done. Of course, I would have to kitbash the Tamiya into a Honey. As issued The Tamiya kit is of a diesel powered M-3 with a cast and rolled plate welded "Horse shoe" turret. The gun in Tamiya's kit is mostly a T shape that roatates inside the turret ends with a correct shape and length fo that turret, hanging out. past the cast mantlet. That means a new corrected flat plate welded and riveted turret is required. This would be no small feat of measuring due to the angles involved. Personally, I cheated and dug into the old archives of stuff that I have saved over the years. In the August September 1979 Issue of AFV/G2 Is an artricle by none other than the editor and publisher of said publication, James G. Steuard. Same guy we all read articles by in FSM. Included in the article is a panel by panel layout of the complete early style turret in all it's glory and it's even dimensioned to match the Tamiya M-3's hull opening. Talk about a cheat code!
I don't know what the copyrights would be after twenty three plus years, but I don't think Mr. Steuard would be too upset if anyone wanted to get a copy of the illustration. I'll try and get in touch with him and see if I can get permission to share it with all the fine folks here on Armorama.
The article is pretty compl;ete covering all the neccessary modifications to make Tamiya's offering into a real deal, early model. I have used it in the past to make up M2A1-4 versions, the predecessors to the M-3. They are all in storage at the moment, my present hovel not lending itself well to displaying large collections of 1/35 and 1/72 armor.
I have all the Osprey, Bellonia, and Tank Illustrated books and a couple of old TM partials I found way back when. That helps. Now if I could just find someone with the complete film that the government made of the Summer 1941 Louisiana Manouvers, I'd be in hog heaven, oink, oink. I have found stills from that two hour long epic produced with the war elevated economy greenbacks in the DOD and Army Website historical archieves, and I have seen snipets of the film on the History Channel, usually when they were trying to show the American Attacks on Normandy. The pre-war soljer boys were having a blast romping around the Louisiana swamps and backwoods in their, as yet untried armor.
I have done enough of these, some with and others without engines and drivetrains to learn how to turn the Diesel engine deck back into the Gas powered fun buggies' deck.. It's mostly putty and styrene patches with PE brass screen and soldered strip brass to make the Inlet screen. Then there is the question of rivets. On Stuarts, even the welded ones, there were rivets, hundreds of rivets. In the Squadron Signal M-3 Stuart in action book is one lonely illustration of the result when they used a riveted model M-3 and 2- .50 Cal Browning machine guns and 4- .30 cal Brownings, all Water cooled, to test the result of gunfire on the riveted construction. That's one of the reasons that the army had a lot of riveted construction M-3's to send to Notrth Africa. The rivets had the disturbing habit of acting just like a cueball shot on the eightball and blowing right out of the plate and into the interior with very devastating results on the inhabitants. I have some shots of the inside of the tank and there are all sorts of interesting little dimpl;es and divots in the white paint of the interior showing the velocity and power of those blown in rivet bodies.
By the same token I can see where the British tankers in North Africa liked the little Beasties. If I were a tanker, I would definitely prefer a reliable and high performance 9 cylinder radial aircraft engine that I could actually play with the governor and generatea lot more git for the buck, at least until you over revved it. That as opposed to cantankerous and sometimes downright recalcitrant Bus engined monstrousity that outweighed it's horsepower rating to the point of absurdity. And yes Virginia, they had armor to let, that the Germans had to use Large caliber anti-aircraft guns to do damage enough to stop their attacks, is testament to that. But that weight of armor paid a price in fuel, mechanical reliablitiy, and speed of manouver that the little M-3 Stuart's seemed like a pair of Nike's compared to Army boots for the tankers.
Anyway I'll try and figure out how to get my 5 pictures from the Armorama Chatroom over to here so you guys can all point and giggle and oink to your little heart's content.....
They are listed there under Modelnut4's moniker. It's too late and I' got a few things to do before sacktime for now.

Jay Pig #53, DSB
Las Vegas,NV

And while modelnut4 is in Dreamland I sneak in and post his pics #:-)

Very nice honey, Nut and Jeepster.

Really nice scratch job there, Nut. Now wish to see more pictures.

wow, there are realy to honey's here i thought this would be a traditional joke. seeing that this is friday.hehehehehehe real nice work stug

yup John

Nice work so far
show us more of it

And I thought it was Women!!
But I knew better also
Nice

nice work.. almost makes me want to go out and buy one... :-)

Good Morning fellow stymates and others.

1. Thank you brother Jeepney for doing what my fuzzy brain was too torqued out to do last night.
2.Thanks for all the kind words of encouragement.
3. OINK, squeal, oink oink.

Okay I gotta scoot on outta here, I have some 45 sites to visit for a certain budding WLA 45 builder and I found two more nifty sites to go check out. and get listed for all our members to enjoy. Then there is that little redhead that just moved in 2 doors down.....

See ya'll later
Jay