Saw photo of M3 halftrack with 40mm Bofors gun mounted on rear bed. Was wondering if anyone has info on kits for this aa gun or something close to it, or even scratchbuilt plans for similar. I have the old Tamiya M2A1 kit but just got the new Dragon halftrack kit. The Dragon kit is apparently pretty good, but the Tamiya kit...not so much, so am willing to sacrifice the Tamiya kit. How about info on how to make it look like it was hit by mortar round and is now burnt and damaged ?
Thanks, and cheers eh ?

The World War Two M15 AA halftrack used a 37mm gun with a pair of Browning .50's. The 40mm Bofors conversion you saw was nonstandard, and probably dated from the Korean conflict. Neither gun is avaliable as a plastic kit though. In all likelihood, one of the Asian companies will offer an antiaircraft halftrack before long, as Trumpeter is also doing some.

The US tried several 40mm gun conversions but could never get one to work the way they wanted. A group in Australia made a field conversion that worked pretty well. No kit of either I'm aware of. The 37mm was just mounting the anti tank gun to the halftrack. I'd think this would be an easier conversion to make.

The M15 was more than just slapping on a 37mm, it consisted of a mount featuring the 37, flanked by two .50 calibers, protected by an armored shield. Building it would require rather a lot of modification to the rear of an M3. There was also another version, the M15A1 with a modified gun mount. Several attempt were made during WW2 to mount the 40mm on both the M2 and M3. None of the designs were adopted for production, although a few test models were made.

John

The 37mm mount I was speaking of wasn't the M15 series AA gun but the 37mm anti tank gun removed from the M6 GMC, the one where the 37 was mounted on a Dodge 3/4 ton truck. This was basically done by "slapping on" the 37mm. Steven Zaloga has one of these on Missing-Lynx. http://www.missing-lynx.com/gallery/usa/m2halftracksz_1.html This looks like it would be a very easy conversion, if that is what you wanted to do.

Is that the US halftrack in Osprey's "Terrain Modelling" book that you are refering to?

Thanks everyone for your quick replies, as usual the input is great. And Rudi, yes the image I saw was from Terain Modelling. Thought I would try something similar. I think now it may be easier to just depict the halftrack in a damaged and burnt out condition. Any thoughts on how to do that would be great, or maybe I should be in another forum for that one.
Thanks, cheers eh ?

Hi Sterling,

The 40mm Bofers will form part of the armament for the Italeri 1/35 ELCO boat due out soon.

It is possible they will release this as a separate kit as it is a model in itself, but no word on that yet. However, it would make sense if they want to maxamise their profit from the moulds, and it would be very popular IMHO.

As Gerald says there are likely to be further versions of the kti plus lots of am goodies.

Hope this helps a bit, I'd say wait a while and see what comes out.

Cheers

Al