Introduction

One of the positive things of the game World of Tanks is that it introduced a lot of obscure vehicles to the wider audience. I’m not sure how many of us have heard of the Batignolles-Chatillion Char 25T aside from for French armor enthusiasts… and now at least 45 million people know of this vehicle. The fame did not come with scale models flooding the market (yet), so I was really happy to see that OKB issued this model in 1/72.

The Char 25T was developed by the Batignolles-Chatillon company (hence the name). Interestingly the company produced trains and locomotives; tanks were a new frontier for them. It was to be a main battle tank, designed around similar principles as the AMX-13: oscillating turret, a 90mm F-3 gun with a magazine/drum type autoloader, low silhouette, and sloped armor (80mm on the front). It featured a hydraulic suspension with six road wheels on each side. The tank was very small (5.67 meters long, 3.16 meters wide and, 2.37 tall), very light (25 tons), and not surprisingly it was highly mobile (65km/h top speed); also somewhat unsurprisingly armor was not exactly strong. It had a crew of four: a commander, a driver, a gunner and a radio operator. The design lost to the more conservative AMX-30, and hence never entered into production. Reliability issues, the oscillating turret, the autoloader (the tank needed to stop and the crew had to exit to reload the gun), and the lack of NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) protection all played a part in the failure of the prototypes in the trials.

Contents

The model comes in a small, sturdy cardboard box. In it we find several small Ziploc bags, and some bubble wrap which make sure that nothing breaks during the transit. The instructions are clear and computer generated.

Review

The model is made up by over a hundred resin pieces and ten PE parts. The parts are very well detailed, the flash is minimal, and the fit is good (when I attached the side to the main hull I needed to use some filler in the front). The headlights come as transparent pieces, which is something I’ve never seen before in a resin model.

The tracks are given as sets of straight resin pieces, which need to be warmed up before shaped to the running gear. (I prefer to use hot –not too hot- water.) The hull and the turret come as one piece (each); most of the small parts make up the running gear. The photoetched fret is very thin and very delicate; it’s very easy to bend (even crumple) the parts; this is something to look out for. (It would be better if they were a bit sturdier) There is very little information available on this vehicle, so I cannot really comment on the accuracy of the kit; it measures up to the published measurements quite well.

The Build

Normally with resin models the suspension is moulded as one part; in this case the elaborate suspension is made up by several small parts (most of the parts of the model are parts of the suspension). The assembly is not very difficult but a fine pair of tweezers is a must have. The fit is surprisingly good, but I ran into a small problem with the road wheels. Due to small misalignments in the suspension arms, the road wheels did not align perfectly; they were a bit wonky. I put the model in some warm (~50C) water and set them straight between two rulers; once the resin cooled the alignment was much better.

The tracks were also warmed up using warm water, and wrapped around the road wheels, drive wheel, return rollers and idler. Since one section will only cover about 2/3rd of the required length, two will need to be used per side.

Once the tracks were installed I glued the sides of the hull on. There was a small gap on one side which needed to be filled; nothing major there. The front part of the mudguards are PE parts which need to be gently bent. It would be nice to have a larger flap that goes under the hull to help gluing them in place.

The lights on the back and their PE covers were a bit difficult to install as the PE kept bending to the slightest touch. (The lights need to be pushed into the holes in the PE covers.) A couple of small PE parts (towing hooks, etc) were attached to the back of the hull and the resin gun lock to the front. (I managed to lose the top part of the gun lock; I’ll make up a replacement after Christmas.) The thinness of the PE is an issue, as it is very easy to bend or distort the pieces during handling.

The turret was pretty easy to finish: top of the fume extractor, the smoke grenade launchers, a rectangular piece of unknown function and the gun barrel had to be attached, and the tank was essentially done. (At least for the purpose of the review. Since Christmas is coming and my schedule is pretty busy, this is where I stopped with the model, It got a dark brown primer coat and misted some green over; I will finish the model in January.)

Conclusion

Overall the model is pretty easy to build (even for someone who has little experience with resin models), measure well up to the dimensions of the tank, and depicts a very unique vehicle; anyone with interest in French “paper panzers” and experimental armor will find it a good addition to their collection. The instructions are clear, the details are very nice; the only issue is the somewhat steep price.