Howdy, Folks,

I was lucky enough to get the Tasca Firefly for Christmas and was hoping to do it as a Polish tank...

As my area of interest is the Pacific, I am a little lost for references... Does anyone know of any good online photo references...?

Also, while the instructions do not indicate using the applique armor for the Polish Firefly, I would still like to do so, anyway (it looks cool) --- I assume that this would not be a big faux pas as it could have been applied in the field at any time...

Thanks!

Regards and Aloha,

Johnny B.

The Fireflies in NW Europe did not have instances where units applied the armor to them once in the field. Any of that work was done in England on the tanks. Some were used in the Firefly conversion projects, some remained as 75mm gun tanks.

The patches, as you know, were to supplant weaknesses in the underlying Sherman M4A4 due to the ammo locker locations. They went over areas where the 75mm ammo bins were located in the sponsons. With the Fireflies, all those bins were removed anyways and posed no particular added vulnerability. There would be no reason for a field maintenance unit to add the patches to a Firefly, too.

However, there are many Polish Firefly VCs with the armor. Keep snooping around and you'll find pics of them. I recommend any of the Wydawnictwo Militaria books about Polish Shermans.

HTH

Hi Havoc

Try this site.
here



Pics like that one. No idea where the vehicle came from though.

Tony

Try the image collection of the Sikorski institute. It covers Italy at least. There may be Fireflies among the 7000 or so images! Otherwise the Polish Shermans 2 book is good with some colour profiles.

http://www.cultura.marche.it/cultura/mostraguerra/default_sik.asp?page=2&order=id

Hi Johnny,

Lucky you :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

The two references given are very good, you might also look om IWM site and may come across something useful.

Cheers

Al

For the Italian campaign, the Sikorski images are excellent. However, there seems to be a cut-off point from 1943. Curiously enough this seems to tie into the re-equipping and re-structuring of the Polish forces... The only Shermans (i've found) in the archives are IIs and IIIs...

Very good for softskins though...

one pic here of a heavily armoured firefly in Holland there may be more here but there's no search function on the site
http://www.bevrijdingskinderen.nl/bevrijd/zuiden3/pages/09-11-44%20Moerdijk-KL_jpg.htm

and one from the IWM site



Description: Sherman tanks of 1st Polish Armoured Division at the start of Operation 'Totalise', 8 August 1944.

Thanks for that Pat.

Al

And a big thanks to all of you for your help!!!! Looking forward to trying something new --- it's been too long since I have built a British vehicle and I have never done any Polish armor, so it should be different for me.

Al, as always, you are the Man About Town!!

Happy New Years, All!!

And thanks again!

Much Aloha,

Johnny B.