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.

 

Sherman or German

So part of my collection is one-off vehicles.  I use them as museum pieces or experiment types.

My plan is to use this as a Sherman test bed vehicle.

The US Army used it to test a new engine, new suspension based on the German interleaved wheels used on many of their tanks and halftracks.

That's plausible because the US Army did put a German interleaved suspension on an M24 Chaffee light tank.

And all through the war they were putting in new upgraded engines.

And compared to this Roco / Heiser Sherman it is not too bad.

Note the size, and the rear engine deck is not too bad either.

Shown here with a German heavy halftrack recovery vehicle.
 

Sherman Pencil Sharpener

A friend of mine gave me this Sherman tank.

It is a metal and plastic pencil sharpener.

A Sherman tank with a strange rear end, odd tracks, and...

... and odd front end.

Still, it's recognizable as a Sherman tank.
 

Heiser Aunt Jemima Mine Roller Instructions

Assembly is simple and fast, but you have to follow the directions.

Here are all the necessary parts with the excess resin cut off ready for assembly.

Compare the drawings on these two pages to identify the parts, and see where they go.

Then test fit everything before you glue anything.  It is not a difficult kit if you follow the directions and don't take any shortcuts.  I eventually glued all the parts together because I like my models to be durable rather than action packed.  But you can make several of the parts move if you want to assemble them that way.

Here you see where some of the other detail parts go.

Paul Heiser does a great job of sealing up his models in little plastic bags so it is very difficult to lose any pieces in transit.
 

Aunt Jemima Mine Roller

These are the parts of the Heiser Models Aunt Jemima mine clearance vehicle.  The main tank is a standard Heiser plastic Sherman tank with these added parts.

The plastic transmission nose is replaced by this one with mine clearance part mounts molded on.

Rear bumper parts.

Various spacer parts for the discs.

Other extra armor, and turret parts.

 Paul Heiser makes two versions of this kit the other one uses a different Sherman as the base vehicle.

Flail in Primer Paint

Once giving a primer coat these flail tanks look much better, I think.

Certainly they don't look so patchwork and more military.

I am out of olive drab paint right now, so these will have to wait for final painting.

Still, I think these look pretty good.

In detail these are not particularly accurate, but do give the general look of the flail.

And they are durable for wargame use.

I am happy with them.

They look good as a group.

The final line up!
 

Flail Tank Information

This is one of the flail tanks that I got in a used collection.

The real tanks had chains with little extra chain parts on them to add weight to beat the ground.

This particular version of the flail is just a bit of wire with a small blob of glue at intervals along the wire.

That makes the wire look like the "chain" has the extra weights on it.

This one is depicting the flail in action.

I did not bend the wire so that it touched the ground.

I figured it would be likely to get caught on the playing surface and either damage the model or the surface.

I have three flail tanks in my collection so a tank battalion could provide one flail to each company in an attack.

These don't move very quickly in real life so it would be important to have artillery to fire smoke and high explosive to protect the flail tank.

My plan is to make three Aunt Jemima mine rollers also, to give me a total of six mine clearing vehicles.

I scratch built two Aunt Jemima anti-mine rollers and purchased one from Paul Heiser Models.  So when I am done I will have a total of six Sherman mine clearing vehicles.