Arctic Tanks and Jeeps

This Roco Minitanks catalog tale of organization for a Cold War US Army Reconnaissance unit is a great small combined arms team.  I am using it for the basis of several units I am building.  By substituting different tanks, light tanks, mortar carriers, APCs, I can change the time period and still have a unit that is reasonably close to real life.

This unit is very similar to my previous one, only in arctic white.

The US Army had an official camouflage scheme of flat white paint overall.  I have never seen a US Army vehicle in this configuration, not even in photos.  But I suspect in areas of the Northern US and Alaska in certain times of year all white would be a good camouflage color to use.  This is a Roco M41 tank that has been painted white, the was tape over the hole for the pin to the turret.

Roskopf M59 armored personnel carrier with the upgraded M48 tank style cupola, and a conversion to the M84 mortar carrier next to it.

A close up of the mortar carrier, you can see the hatches on the roof.  In the back you can see the M38 Jeeps and an M47 tank.

The truck bed is for a vehicle that is not part of this unit and there will be more on it later.

 I tape the tank turret pins with blue tape, and mask the holes in the hull also so they don't bind up after painting.  Usually I build the model completely, then primer paint it and then paint it over all and finally paint the details.  I do it this way because sometimes the vehicles participate in set ups or wargames before they are completely finished and it can be years, even decades between start and finish of a project.

1956 Reconnaissance Unit

An old Roco Minitanks Catalog had a table of organization for a US Army Reconnaissance Unit for 1968.  I always wanted to make that unit.

So in considering that table, I decided to make it using several different US Army Cold War vehicles.

I started with the M47 tank instead of the M48 tank.  And I used the Roco M38 Jeep rather than the M114 reconnaissance vehicle.  I used the Roskopf M59 APC instead of the M113.  Then I converted a Roskopt M84 and made it into the M84 mortar carrier.

This is the original Roco Catalog page.

This is my interpretation of that organization for the period about 1955 to 1960.

Note the M47 and the M59 APC have Roco M48 tank cupolas.  This was common on late production M59s and was tested on the M47 but not fielded.
 

 

 

 The mortar in this photo is an 81mm as that was my first choice, but I changed it later to a 4.2 inch mortar and added the base plate to the rear ramp.  The US Army did consider an 81mm mortar version but decided against it.