Hey Guys,
Thought I'd share a wip I have been building in the background whilst building my M4A3E8. This is the rather nice Dragon offering of the M4A2 76 (W) with a few refinements along the way. I tried not to go too ott but with the enormous amount of after market add ons available I cant seem to help myself. I didn't take any photos along the way but here's a few of the painted and unweathered model.






The Only weathering I have done was to add some pre coloured wood filler putty to the inside of the lower hull and in the tracks. I had to cut the tracks down and resort to actually sewing the tracks back together with thin thread. The putty hides this quite nicely.

Whilst waiting on some decals I have started painting the detail parts, like the pioneer tools. I have also started painting the armoured glass.

It seems I've been raking leaves for a month straight, but I did get some time to work on this one. I hand painted on some turret numbers for an M4A2 76 (W) in Wein April 1945. It's a bit of conjecture on my part and based on a famous picture of Soviet Shermans in the Wien area at the time. My model did not have the correct tracks or road wheel combination to exactly reproduce the known variants, so I went with Vehicle 937. Hopefully I can get a bit more time this week to finish up the markings and get on to the weathering.
Thanks for looking.

It's a very small thing, but these Fisher M4A2s from late 1944 had the front lifting eyes in the outboard position, very near the edge of the glacis plate. Take a close look at your reference picture, and you'll see what I mean. It wouldn't be a difficult fix.

Looks nice. The Soviets seemed to loose a lot of tools, and were very sloppy refueling.

Hey Cam, that looks very nice. Gerald, I think he would be better off leaving it as is. The were some...not a lot...of hulls in this configuration. To change it would require moving the lift eyes, narrowing the splash rails in front of the hatches, adding to glacis plate upper edge, and there are four assist handles on the engine deck lids. To make the later hull it is easier to use the Dragon M4A2 PTO Late hull with the M4A2 Red Army turret. You also then get a fairly accurate M4A2 for Peleliu.
Just my 2 cents
Jeff

Hey Thanks guys. I appreciate all the feedback. I am however going to leave it as is at this point. I also noticed the lack of pioneer tools but I wanted to use the formations tools. I will however be weathering the S*^& out of it. Nasty fuel stains and all. Thanks again. Hopefully I can get the next one a bit more accurate.

The DML kits fenders suffer. The angle is off, they should be more rounded and follow the lines of the track. Also colored glasses shod be just clear or smoked not green. The Russians beat the crap out of their tanks and often didn't have the .50 on top. I do like your work, it's inspiring for sure!

The pursuit of excellence, the achilles heel of all modelers.

Here's a small update.
Changed the vehicle number and added some Shipping stencils from Archer's AFT line.

Finally got a little time to move forward on this one. I've added a bit of soft stowage and started the weathering. Not much more to go.

Does anyone know what radio antenna and mount they used?

Nice one! Ever wanted to build a Vienna Sherman!

Following Dimitry Lozas book "Commanding Red Armys Sherman tanks" the Shermans were delivered with every bit and piece like the US Shermans and also put in use that way. Given the shortage of radios in the Red Army during WW2 it would be an educated guess to go with US radios and antennas.

Regards
- dutik

Danke Dutik!
I kinda thought this as well but I was really unsure if they had to be Russian radios or if they just didn't bother using them at all because there was a shortage.

The Weathering continues. I'm looking forward to finishing this one and starting something new. Any Comments please fire away.

What did the "shipping instructions" on the side of the tank say?

Here you go.