Sherman Mine Clearing

Mine roller, I used little chains that I got from a craft store, probably Hobby Lobby.

The other structures are bits of Plastruct, and Evergreen Plastic bits.

The canvas on the rear deck is Roco and other parts to hide the grill on the deck.  In real life this hull shape should not have that grill on the deck, it is an error by Roco.

I have also cut the hulls in half and used the rear half of a Heiser Model Sherman for the back end.

Shermans often carried lots of gear so this is pretty modest.  These tanks are very important for US Army European actions to get roads clear so that other tanks and vehicles can exploit breakthroughs.
 

Sherman Mine Flail

This is a Sherman tank with a mine flail.

It consists of a rotating drum with chains attached to it.

The drum turns and the chains beat the ground.

The beating chains explode the mine.  This tank is part Roco, the hull, and part Heiser models.  The rear deck has been partially covered to hide the incorrect engine vents that the Roco hull has on it.

 

Godzilla Car

Recently Hot Wheels have done several cars with a Japanese theme, and several with Godzilla specifically.

Like this one.

The red is the word Godzilla in Japanese.

I think it is a nice looking little car with excellent markings.

I picked up a couple of these and they will make up my Godzilla research council.

Lord Death Man is a Batman foe who in the Batman 66 vs Godzilla (an unauthorized 3 part comic that only got two parts printed) he controlled Godzilla for a while.

So this car could be one of his, or it could be those who oppose him.

Still a useful vehicle I think, either way.

Goes well with dragster.
 

Japanese Police, Drag Racing, Godzilla

Japanese police car by Hot Wheels.  One of my projects is to do capital cities for the major nations who fought in WWII.  While I would like to do all of them I am doing Washington, D.C., London, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, and Tokyo.

I am extending those cities forward and backward to the 21st Century and WWI.

They are mostly going to be like a movie set, so Moscow which is essentially finished, is just Red Square, the rest of the city won't be modeled as such, I will just use generic 20th Century buildings to represent the regular city.

One of the reasons to do Tokyo, is of course, Godzilla.

While this Mustang funny car is not specifically Godzilla....

It does has a lot of Godzilla vibe going for it, look at the door just below the lower left edge of the window.

It's a pretty cool car and will likely face the Big G at some point.

In several of the Godzilla movies there are public and private organizations who study Godzilla.

So having a car with high speed and massive acceleration might be a good idea.

And it's just a cool car, I think.

Nice wheelie bar on the back.

No drag racing in Tokyo.
 

US Army Halftracks

This particular model M15 got a canvas cover over the driver compartment, but my other three don't have that, just for a little variety.

M15 40mm and M15 37mm, Roco Conversion and Filament Fighters.

The M15 37mm had a more open turret than the 40mm. 

The turrets needed more armor in the Pacific where the Japanese were likely to close assault armor.

The turrets are removable and it is easy to mix them up and they are not always exactly interchangeable.

So I note a small number on the bottom of the turret and on the top of the halftrack rear so that the same halftrack gets the same turret each time.
 

M15 Halftracks US Army

This is a Filament Fighters M15 37mm anti-aircraft halftrack with two .50 caliber machine guns in 3D printed resin.
 

This is a Roco Minitank M3 halftrack that has been converted to an M15 special 40mm anti-aircraft carrier.

I have four of the M15 specials that a friend of mine made a few decades ago.

Recently I have been upgrading my WWII US Army collection, in this case painting these vehicles.

These have the Airfix 40mm Bofors gun in the back, which even though it is 1/76th scale, it looks pretty good.

The M15 special was built in the Pacific and was used late war in the Philippines.  Only a few of these were built.  The M15 with 37mm gun was used in North Africa and most places US Army troops operated with air defense.

The US Army used AA halftracks in platoons of four guns, in companies of 16 guns.  They often task organized halftracks to mix the platoons of a company.  So rather than four companies of M16 halftracks with four .50 caliber machine guns, you might have two M16 platoons and two M15 platoons in a single company.  Figures here are old Airfix USMC figures for WWII in 1/76th scale.

Filament Fighers Preview

Dodge ambulance, WWII US Army.

Cadillac staff car, 1930 US Army.

Cadillac staff car, 1942 US Army.

M1 Combat Car, 1938, US Army.

These are some of the Filament Fighters vehicles I will be reviewing in the next few days and weeks, I just wanted to give you a little sneak peek at them.  I got my first Roco Minitanks in about 1963 when I was a little kid.  I got some of the first Paul Heiser Models ever made as I knew Paul before he was actually in business, in about 1988.  And I am just as excited by the new developments in 3D printed models that these kits bring to us.  

I still love my Minitanks and my Paul Heiser Models and have no intention of getting rid of any or replacing them with 3D printed kits.  But these new 3D models have a huge range, including many things like the ones shown above that we never got in HO scale before, and I am very pleased.

The Good Filament Fighters

There is a lot of good news about this vehicle compared to the resin cast version.  To start off it costs about 1/2 the price of a resin cast vehicle.  For those of us on a budget or who make large armies, that's very good news.

The model is very few parts and easy to put together.  The railings are a single part of the kit printed onto the body, so it makes them stronger and less fiddly, they don't have to be glued on, because they are already a part of the vehicle.  The wheels and machine gun are the only separate pars and they go on quickly with super glue.

The filament is very durable, if this model were dropped from table top height to the carpeted floor, it probably would not break, on a resin kit you likely would break the railings.

Strangely, this one does not have a detailed underside which is unusual for Filament Fighters.  But that's not really an issue for me.

 The model comes unassembled and only has to be cut from the little tabs, it's not even a sprue.  You have to cut supports from around the wheel wells, I use my sprue cutter and then X-Acto knife for those jobs and they work fine.  So out of of the little bag and ready to put together in only a couple minutes.

These are very strong models, while they won't take actual abuse, don't step on them, I doubt they will incur damage on the wargame table as frequently as resin cast or even plastic molded vehicles.  

I liken these to the old soft metal castings, in terms of durability, speed of assembly, and level of detail.  But they are lighter, which is nice when you put 50 of them in a box, and they don't bend like the old metal models, and these are much cheaper.