introduction

Operation Infatuate II....one of my favorite subjects of World War 2. This forgotten operation was the amphibious landing on the heavily defended Dutch island Walcheren in order to clear the way to the harbour of Antwerp for Allied supply ships.
During Infatuate II, British forces used LVT-2 and LVT-4 buffalos. I always wanted to build such a LVT in 1:35 but how would I make it really look British?

The anwser is the 20mm Polsten cannon: a typically British modification to the US built LVT. Luckily for me, Cromwell Models offers a resin Polsten in scale 1:35 scale, but how good is this kit?

kit contents

The Polsten is made out of 13 resin parts and 1 photo etched part. These parts all come seperately in 2 plastic bags.

The resin parts are for the gun and the attachment to the LVT. The PE part is the gunsight for the 20mm.

detail & fit

The detail on the parts is good. Some examples are the springs for the recoil of the gun and the well detailled gun mount.

The overall fit is good as well. You only need to take care when adding the 20mm barrel itself: I had a little trouble getting the gun pointed excactly in the centre. However if you take your time during the build and dry fit before assembly it shouldn't be a problem.

instructions

So far everything is very good about this kit. Only one thing bothered me: the instructions.
It's not really uncommon for resin kit's to have hard-to-understand instructions but the only instructions supplied with this kit were two A4 size prints with pictures of the completed gun. These prints were black/white but far too dark to see anything useful.

However with some thought it's not that difficult to understand where the parts need to be placed. You can also use the sample images on the Cromwell Models website (which are the same as supplied with the kit but are in colour and much clearer).

So, the instructions are poor, but on the other hand you don't really need high quality instructions.

in conclusion

I think this kit gives provides you with a great opportunity to build a really British looking LVT. It's not that expensive, easy to build (even for those without experience with resin) and not very common.


Recommended

Thanks to Cromwell Models for supplying the review sample!