Dragon's M48 family comes the most ambitious version yet – a fantastic model of an M48 Armored Vehicle Launched Bridge (AVLB)

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Thanks!

Not quite the first in plastic. Revell did this way back in the sixties:-) 1.35 or 1.40?? I have one in the attic, built when I was a kid. Really excellent news though. Maybe this will pave the way for more bridgelayers from more manufacturers.

For what time period was this used?

From the 50s to the mid-90s I believe.

Yes, Revell did produce a kit in 1:40. I’m currently working on it and can’t wait to get my chow-hooks on this new one!

WooHoo!!

It would be great news if it was reasonably accurate. But if those CAD images are representative of the actual kit, it won't be accurate. We can only hope the design was much improved after those CAD images were generated and before the molds were cut.

I'm aware of two other model kit manufacturers that had AVLB in their sights and any of them would be most likely greatly superior to the Dragon kit. But now they will probably shelve their projects, at least for some time. So from that perspective Dragon kit is not such great news at all...

Also: "a fantastic model"?... How do we know it is going to be "fantastic"? Was any of recent Dragon modern armor releases "fantastic"? Nope, very far from it...

it's not going to be accurate

Looks great! The suspension of 'multiple parts' may mean posing it in the launching or retrieving mode. Great news, I am very excited by this one. Also, Leopard122 these are still in use across the US Army and Marines. In so,me units we had a mix of M48 and M60 hulls at the same time. Again, looking forward to this.

I too am looking forward to this release. I may use the AVLB parts and add them to an M60 hull to make an M60 AVLB.




There are still quite a few M60 AVLBs around, but many have been replaced in the active Army with the M104 Wolverine M1 AVLB. US Army bought 44 M104s.



The M104 is slated to be replaced soon by the Joint Assualt Bridge, which is a more simple Abrams-based design which is more similar to the M48/M60 AVLB design with folding bridge sections, as opposed to the M104's sliding bridge section design.

Just hope they include the two extra return rollers because the ones I saw were M48A3 based not M48A2.

You know Dragon could do a M60 based one as they did a M60A2 which is a lot of M60 AVLB were based on.

I'd LOVE to see Dragon or Trumpy do an M1 based AVLB.

I'd go sell a couple pints of blood for that!

Fond High School memories of building the old Revell kit though an odd scale by today's standards. Have had hopes of seeing a CORRECT bridger in 1/35th for sometime now. Not sure it is here yet but we can only hope.

My bet would be on Rye Field Models doing an M104 based on them doing the excellent Abrams-based M1150 ABV. Fingers crossed.

Hoping that AFV Club will take a stab at an AVLB but in the interim I'll settle for this.

That might be a realistic option considering AFV Club's M60 releases combined with their parallel company Hobby Fan and their previous release of a full resin M48A5 AVLB. If the masters from the Hobby Fan M48A5 AVLB could be re-tooled for injection molding and modified for an M60 hull an AFV Club produced M60 AVLB might be a viable and marketable kit option.

Agree - I am also skeptical... Inaccuracy at high price is what I am afraid of- Dragon has been putting out turds recently - especially with black plagues even though this one is in the "Smart" kit group. There probably won't be improvements over the CADs most likely.

Looks like another fine addition to the stash...

Hopefully a kit like this will get Takom looking at a Chieftain AVLB!

Wow, that's something unusual, will be fun to build one