1/35 M70A2 Krueger MBT, Desert Storm, 1991

[Guest]

Here’s the engine deck with all the hatches and things marked out on it:

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And with the hatches scribed:

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This was somewhat tricky, as I don’t have much experience with scribing things like this — I’ve never rescribed panel lines on an aircraft kit, for example. However, I did have a selection of extremely sophisticated tools at my disposal for this job:

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A Trumpeter panel line scriber (bought at some point because I figured it might be useful eventually. Oh, and it was dirt-cheap), a Tamiya plastic cutter (which I wouldn’t want to do without), a steel ruler, and a piece of etched fret from a Tamiya Dragon Wagon kit That last one I used for the rounded corners on the inside of one of the openings in the fret, so I could put round corners on the hatches. I used the Trumpeter scriber for those, but the Tamiya one for the removable centre of the engine deck, as I figured this would have wider, deeper lines around it than the crew-openable hatches.

I then glued the engine deck into place and added the basic filler caps:

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Originally, I intended to scribe those, but couldn’t find a good way to do that neatly, so I made them from very thin plastic card instead with another sophisticated tool:

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Finally for now, I trimmed the engine deck to size once the glue had dried and added the frames around the gratings from thin plastic strip:

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I began with the edgings around the outsides of the openings, the added the transverse strips, and finished with the fore-and-aft bits, which are actually in four pieces. To get them all to stay on the model, I first applied plastic cement where they touch each other, and then flowed superglue underneath each to stick them to the mesh as well.

[scottie3158]

Jakko,

Nice work so far.

[Guest]

Thanks, though I noticed another problem: though I got the hatches correctly spaced from the centreline, something else has gone wrong so that the engine deck on the right is wider than on the left You can tell in the photo because the long hatch on the left side (on the right in the picture) is closer to the edge of the deck than the other one. I’m debating whether to fill the hatches on the right and rescribe them, or to cover them with something so I can save myself the effort.

[Guest]

Now that the engine deck only needs detail work, it’s time to start on the major conversion of the turret. The MBT-70 was designed with spaced armour and a thick layer of polyethylene to block nuclear radiation (apparently, it reduced the radiation inside the tank by a factor 20 compared to outside). This was also the reason for putting the driver into the turret, by the way: so all the crew could be shielded from radiation effectively in a single compartment. The armour was apparently designed to defeat 105 mm APDS at 800 metres. (See the photo of the Spielberger book above )

The M1 Abrams was designed a bit later, and could take advantage of developments in armour technology, initially chobham armour and then depleted uranium. So what would stop the US Army from redesigning the turret to allow it to be fitted with that kind of armour too? Not all that much, I think, so my plan all along has been to replace the curved turret front by flat plates — chobham armour can’t be made into curved sections effectively, as far as I know. So far I’ve produced a card mockup:

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It was a bit of a fiddly job, first attaching a piece of card to the bottom of the turret to indicate the lower edge of the armour, and then tinkering with cut bits of card to get the angles right so I can later duplicate this in plastic card.I’m not sure yet if I’ll cut away the kit’s turret front or build the new armour on top of it. Probably the latter.

The armour extends as far forward as is possible without fouling the engine deck. The cut-away front corner is there for the same reason; ballistically it would probably be better to extend it forward, but then it would be blocked by the engine deck. I also put the armour far enough forward to enclose the gun trunnions, which seemed rather exposed on the MBT-70. I have indicated the size needed for the cutout for the sight, but may not put it there after all — looking at the model, moving the sight up a bit would be an option that improves both armour protection and the vehicle’s turret-down silhouette, after all.

On the left side, there is a square projection for the missile tracker sight, and that will get removed on the model since with a 120 mm gun, the tank wouldn’t fire MGM-51 missiles. I will keep the remote gun mount, though.

There is also a bit of plastic tube on the kit trunnion, so I can slot a Tamiya 120mm gun barrel into it:

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Based on the balance point of the real gun, the tube should actually be a centimetre longer, but as I’ll also build a new mantlet instead of using the cast original piece, I figure it would add enough mass at the front that the gun would be mounted more to the rear.

[Guest]

Braving the heat (about 30 degrees here, both outside and in my hobby room), I continued working on the turret armour. Using the card templates, I cut plastic card to shape, then trimmed it down to actually fit the turret:

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As you can see, I decided to make a cut-out for the gunner’s sight after all, so this will go in its original position. Now I need to close the gaps with more plastic card and filler. On the left side of the turret, I removed the missile tracker and glued a piece of plastic card in its place to form the turret side armour. I’m going to build angular plates around the curved armour, again on the principle that chobham armour is flat, but will still need to accommodate the remotely controlled turret. This is why there’s still a bit gap at the bottom of the curved area: it will simply be covered over, so there’s no need to fill it.

For the hull, I began building the suspension, and noticed the six stations on each side arrn’t exactly the same. The instructions don’t tell you how they differ, but the third and fifth wheel stations have a different suspension arm from the other four. I looked at the sprue and couldn’t see why this was so, until I noticed a very hard to spot difference. A photo with a simple aid illustrates it quite well:

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Nos. 32 (for the left side) and 33 (for the right) are ever so slightly shorter than 30 (left) and 31 (right). Even then I’m hard-pressed to tell the difference between the parts for the two sides … Dragon should have take a cue from Tamiya here: differently sized or -shaped locating lugs would prevent any mixup at all.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Impressive stuff. You seem to be well on the way with this conversion. Neatly done too. As for those suspension arms - guaranteed confusion.
Jim

[minitnkr]

Very good scratchery. PaulE

[Guest]

Impressive stuff. You seem to be well on the way with this conversion. Neatly done too.

Thanks, and to Paul too

those suspension arms - guaranteed confusion.

I was about to just cut them all off the sprue and stick them on to random mounts, but took one more close look — only then did I spot the length difference. I doubt you’d notice it on the model at all if you did mix them up, though, as the difference seems to be only about half a millimetre.

[Guest]

Basic turret conversion work is now done:

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I attached the front plates I showed earlier, with some minor corrections before and after doing so, then filled in the large gaps with plastic card and smaller ones with both two-party epoxy putty (Magic Sculp) and filler from a tube in several stages, all followed by filing, carving and wet-sanding to get everything in shape. A little bit more is needed, but the main parts are done so I can finally start on the details soon.

The rear roof had four small rectangular, bolted-down plates and a smaller, higher thing on it that I all removed, and the locating square for the German aerial mount on the right side too. I then filled in the scars with more tube putty and sanded that flat too, in preparation for Abrams-style blowoff panels on the roof that I still need to make.

[Guest]

Next, the blowoff panels and anti-slip coating.

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The panels were simply cut from 0.75 mm plastic card, 37 mm long and 57 mm wide. The front-to-back length is based on the size of the autoloader magazine in technical drawings in the books I mentioned earlier, the width is simply pretty much the largest that will fit comfortably on the roof. I then cut that piece into three sections, the smaller ones 10 mm wide each, to mimic the early M1 Abrams style; the space between them is the thickness of my steel ruler

You can also see that I added plastic card in the hole for the remote turret, because Dragon doesn’t provide anything there at all, and you would be able to see straight into the main turret. I curved a 16 mm wide strip of 0.25 mm plastic card and glued it to the inside of the turret, with another piece of plastic card underneath to create a floor. It would have been smarter to do this before glueing the top and bottom halves of the turret together, though.

I then taped off the outlines of most of the areas that were to receive an anti-slip coating:

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That just left finding a good way to actually make it I began by experimenting on an offcut of plastic card, painting the attempts to see what they would look like when done:

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At the top is filler putty stippled with a cut-down brush, which looks OK, the smooth area below that is Mr. Surfacer 1000 stippled with the same brush (I would have used the thicker 500, but my pot of it had dried out), and below that is acrylic gel with sand sprinkled into it. That’s the option I went with:

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Step by step, here’s the front turret with gel applied using a spatula, trying to get an even coat:

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The coat doesn’t need to be perfectly flat, though, as the gel shrinks a bit as it dries and so the bumps tend to even themselves out.

Next, sand sprinkled on using the tea strainer to get rid of the large pieces, hairs, etc. that inevitably end up in an open box of sand sitting in your modelling room for decades I just shook the turret over the box again to get rid of the loose excess.

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And finally the tape carefully removed to prevent lifting the gel:

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More areas still need doing, but the tape for the others got in the way so it was just simpler to do it in multiple steps.

Note that I’m using beach (sea) sand here, not river (construction) sand. River sand is typically coarser, while beach sand is very fine and much more suitable as an almost-in-scale texture. I think fine sand can also be purchased from pet shops, for use in bird cages, but if you live near the sea you may be able to just go get some for free

[Guest]

More work done on the engine deck and hull rear:

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The engine deck is mostly complete, except for the anti-slip coating and some details (lifting eyes on the front deck, mainly), but the rear hull still needs a fair amount added to it. The taillights are from a Tamiya Bradley; I deliberately added these instead of the earlier style of taillights the real MBT-70 used (the same as on pretty much all American vehicles from the 1930s until the 1970s) because they were on the Bradley, which was developed in the 70s/80s. The lifting eyes on the rear are from some Dragon kit, but I don’t recall which one, while those on the engine deck are probably ancient Tamiya, both via my spares box. The bolt heads are from my recently purchased hex punch and die set.

Also bolt heads on the blowoff panels:

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I also put together a crew, using this set from Masterbox:

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Though it says it’s for Afghanistan, the uniforms they wear are the Nomex coveralls that were also issued for the ground part of the Gulf War — most modellers stick crews in BDUs (standard uniforms) into Gulf War tanks, but that’s really only correct for the phase before the actual ground war started. From photos, tank and Bradley crews at least appear to have been issued the Nomex coveralls, and tankers the slim body armour as well, before going into Kuwait and Iraq.

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The figures are built per the box, except I’m going to replace the heads by Hornet ones, as shown. From left, it’s the driver, the gunner (who’ll be standing on the turret) and commander. I carved the holster straps off the latter two, because tankers don’t seem to have worn them much in 1991. It’s still on the driver because I had already built him before I noticed the lack of holsters on most crewmen

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
Some very nice scratchery.

[Guest]

Cheers It looks better in the photos than on the real model, though … My mistake was trying to scratchbuild the whole engine deck and hull rear instead of modifying the Dragon parts by replacing the detail and adding engine deck vertical sides. I would recommend the latter approach to anyone else wanting an American MBT-70 (whether as a real-world prototype or a “what-if” model like this).

[Guest]

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Hinges on the flap on the hull rear. There’s three of these, 3 mm wide each, and consisting of seven pieces per hinge: a square base plate, a tab going onto the lid from 1 mm plastic strip, a bit of 1 mm half-round rod to make the hinged end of that tab, a 1.25 mm punched disc of 1 mm plastic card (with one side cut flat) on each side, and an 0.85 mm punched hexagon of 0.5 mm card to make the bolt head and nut on either side.

Glad this bit is now on

[Guest]

I figure a fictional M70 would have more extensive stowage baskets etc. on the turret than the prototypes did, given that the M1 also got extra bins as part of the IP M1 upgrade as early as the late 80s. So:

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I built a turret side bin on the right, like that on the M1 prior to the M1A1, though it still needs latches. No bin on the left side, because there isn’t room with the remote turret there. Both sides will have a stowage rack like in the photo for the left side (not glued when I took the picture, hence the Blu-Tack to keep everything in place), but I haven’t built that for the right-hand side yet. This is just 1 mm brass rod bent into shape, and inserted into holes drilled in the turret side at the front and a piece of plastic card with holes at the back. I need to find a way to add vertical bars, but this is proving very tricky, because they need cutouts for the bars, and I don’t feel like having to make a dozen bars to get four that fit.

I originally wanted to bend the bars at both ends to fit into holes at the rear corner of the turret, but found it hard to get things right, because at the rear they needed to curve forward, so I gave up on that and just filled the holes I’d drilled again.

The smaller tan boxes are from an Esci M60 kit (later reissued by Italeri, but the colour of the plastic shows these to be original Esci), and on the real thing would hold smoke grenades for the launchers that I haven’t put onto the model yet for fear of breaking them off.

The tow cable is from a Dragon M1A2 kit, onto which I had only put one and built empty brackets on the other side about twenty years ago. Yes, it was still in one of my spares boxes after all that time

I also put lengths of plastic strip into the hole for the gunner’s sight, as bullet deflectors to keep enemy fire away from the optics. This has no precedent on American tanks, but then, none have had the gunner’s primary sight mounted like on this tank, so I felt it’s plausible to add this anyway.