Friday, 3 January 2014

A history of Airfix HO/OO AFV kits - part 13 - 1971

This year saw three new kits - all of them tanks.
The Chieftain was at the time entering service with the British Army, and the kit captures the mighty beast rather well.
A very nice Chieftain built by Erhntly - photo stolen from his excellent blog.

The Crusader has long been one of my personal favourites.  It looks very racy and elegant - even if we all know it was a far from perfect tank in service!  The kit makes up as either a MkII (with 2pdr gun and additional MG turret) or a MkIII with (6pdr gun).
My MkIIIs are all the Hasegawa kits, so here are a couple of my MkIIs.  The Airfix hull is slightly too long but it's nothing I lose any sleep over.

The Panzer IV tank was another wonderfully useful release.  It took me a while to get round to owning one as being a Series 2 kit it always seemed rather expensive!  Eventually though, I stumped up the required £0.46 and built it as an F-2 with the long barrelled 75mm gun.  An additional barrel was included to enable less power crazed modellers to built the short 75-armed F-1 version.
This Pz IV serving with 20 Panzer Grenadier Division benefits from added turret armour.
A very standard F-2 - a veteran of many campaigns this is on the strength of 10 PD.

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9 comments:

  1. Stephen Thomas3 January 2014 at 15:46

    Very nice models Tim. I picked up some second hand Piv's at Tripples last year. I may even get around to smartening them up and using them in a game before too long. . . . . Don't hold your breath though.

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  2. Tim Gow3 January 2014 at 16:20

    Stephen Thomas
    Best to let them 'mature' for a few years yet...

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  3. The Dancing Cake Tin3 January 2014 at 22:11

    Very true, you can't beat a lungful of gamey plastic in the morning.

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  4. Paul Foster4 January 2014 at 00:48

    Where would the wargame world be without the trusty Airfix Panzer IV!

    An oldie but a goodie.

    I really must build some F1 versions myself.

    Top notch post.

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  5. Tim Gow4 January 2014 at 18:39

    Dancing Cake Tin
    How you must know life!

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  6. Tim Gow4 January 2014 at 18:40

    Paul Foster
    My old F-2 became an F-1 when another player stood on it....

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous6 January 2014 at 12:48

    Ah yes, 1971 was a good year. The 2pdr gun mounting from the Airfix Crusader ended up in my Mark 1 Churchill conversion.

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  8. Tim Gow6 January 2014 at 14:31

    Martin Rapier
    How very enterprising of you! My early conversions generally involved adding bigger guns.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Geordie an Exiled FoG16 January 2014 at 23:05

    The Crusader Mk I was a really nice kit, especially as it could be upgraded to the II and III, tagging alongside the Matilda and Grant (even Sherman)

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