PSC British 25pdr & CMP Quad Tractor in 1/72 scale
Posted: March 7th, 2017, 1:25 am
To go with the British & Commonwealth CMP 15 cwt Truck by Plastic Soldier Company, I recently bought the 1/72 scale CMP Quad Field Artillery Tractor, as I fancied building something used by the Allies rather than Axis. Like the CMP Truck it is fairly simple in construction and goes together very quickly and lend itself to a bit of detailing, such as having wing mirrors, a hold on handle in front of the roof hatch and bridge plate. Some windows can also be stuck quite easily from the inside though purists may wish to fix them in the windows, especially in the rear compartment, as the doors are quite thick.
As with the CMP Truck the radiator is for a Chevrolet but the axles are Ford. In my case I removed these and added banjo type axles from the spares box after sawing out the kit ones between the stubs for the wheels. As it’s a Chevrolet it needs a radiator overflow tank stuck on the side of the bonnet on the left hand passenger side, which I have yet to make out of scrap.
Another option is to keep the axles, and not bother with a radiator overflow tank and instead shave off the detail on the radiator and make it flat (and more in scale) and add a small oval Ford badge
For a Ford radiator I was thinking of painting it a lighter shade of the base colour then spraying the vehicle colour through some fine mesh I have and so hopefully leave a pattern. I did consider cutting the mesh for the rad but it is too tough and also would not sit well on such a small model, plus I’d need to create an engine and engine bay to go behind it.
The bad bits apart from the wrong axles, is that the wheels are so massively over scale. Photos of CMPs show the extra-large gap between the top of the wheel and the wheel arches. This was to allow the axle to move quite a lot over rough ground. So with the kit wheels in place the Quad looks quite wrong but a rather easy solution is at hand by using the wheels from the CMP Truck which for a 15cwt are also massively oversize. When the CMP Truck wheels are used on the Quad they are still a bit large but look so much better. On the real Quad vehicle the tyres don’t come up higher than the bottom of the cab doors, and another problem is that the CMP wheels have a hole right through them, so the nice hub detail on the CMP Quad kit are lost. However I’m sure they can be made up from scrap.
All I need now is some wheels for the CMP Truck; hopefully someone will do some aftermarket ones for this kit and those to replace the really dreadful ones in IBG 1/72 scale CMP 15cwt kits!
As for colour schemes, although this vehicle was made from 1942 or 1943, it was too late for use in the Desert in WW2 and doesn’t feature that often in the Italian Campaign in 1943-1944, which suggests the vehicle may have been stock piled in the UK for D-Day. According to Mike Starmer’s camouflage research a mid-war CMP Quad may have been produced in SCC.2 Brown and have black or dark brown upper surfaces with micky mouse type camo on the sides, and yet most photos I have seen show these Quads in a single colour which for D-Day and afterwards in NW Europe would be the SC.15 Olive Drab which was the basic colour, which the Mike Starmer has stated didn’t need black upper surfaces and mickey mouse as in the previous scheme.
Top; the Quad with the kit wheels
Quad with wheels from CMP 15cwt Truck
As with the CMP Truck the radiator is for a Chevrolet but the axles are Ford. In my case I removed these and added banjo type axles from the spares box after sawing out the kit ones between the stubs for the wheels. As it’s a Chevrolet it needs a radiator overflow tank stuck on the side of the bonnet on the left hand passenger side, which I have yet to make out of scrap.
Another option is to keep the axles, and not bother with a radiator overflow tank and instead shave off the detail on the radiator and make it flat (and more in scale) and add a small oval Ford badge
For a Ford radiator I was thinking of painting it a lighter shade of the base colour then spraying the vehicle colour through some fine mesh I have and so hopefully leave a pattern. I did consider cutting the mesh for the rad but it is too tough and also would not sit well on such a small model, plus I’d need to create an engine and engine bay to go behind it.
The bad bits apart from the wrong axles, is that the wheels are so massively over scale. Photos of CMPs show the extra-large gap between the top of the wheel and the wheel arches. This was to allow the axle to move quite a lot over rough ground. So with the kit wheels in place the Quad looks quite wrong but a rather easy solution is at hand by using the wheels from the CMP Truck which for a 15cwt are also massively oversize. When the CMP Truck wheels are used on the Quad they are still a bit large but look so much better. On the real Quad vehicle the tyres don’t come up higher than the bottom of the cab doors, and another problem is that the CMP wheels have a hole right through them, so the nice hub detail on the CMP Quad kit are lost. However I’m sure they can be made up from scrap.
All I need now is some wheels for the CMP Truck; hopefully someone will do some aftermarket ones for this kit and those to replace the really dreadful ones in IBG 1/72 scale CMP 15cwt kits!
As for colour schemes, although this vehicle was made from 1942 or 1943, it was too late for use in the Desert in WW2 and doesn’t feature that often in the Italian Campaign in 1943-1944, which suggests the vehicle may have been stock piled in the UK for D-Day. According to Mike Starmer’s camouflage research a mid-war CMP Quad may have been produced in SCC.2 Brown and have black or dark brown upper surfaces with micky mouse type camo on the sides, and yet most photos I have seen show these Quads in a single colour which for D-Day and afterwards in NW Europe would be the SC.15 Olive Drab which was the basic colour, which the Mike Starmer has stated didn’t need black upper surfaces and mickey mouse as in the previous scheme.
Top; the Quad with the kit wheels
Quad with wheels from CMP 15cwt Truck