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Iron Mike's Firefly VC !

Iron Mike

Iron Mike

Master At Arms And Resident Curmudgeon
After much consideration and consternation, a decision has been reached. My entry for the Operation Overlord build is the Firefly VC from DML. A friend of mine said I build too much Axis machinery and that I should give the OD a go, just for grins! So, just for grins, I'm going to build this one OOB and in the 13/18th Royal Hussars livery! :D Here's my datelines...

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I'll start with the construction soon, comments, hints, suggestions, critiques always welcome!
 
Ahhhh another Tiger target! :laugh: This should be a good one to watch.

Terry B)
 
From the reviews I've read, if I can get past the tracks, I'm golden. :laugh: In the two plus years of armor building, I've only done one Allied vehicle. I hope I can do it justice!
 
Wow Mike that Samuel Adams looks so life like :Hmmm . Well, can't be taking sides . Remember it took about five Shermans to one of theirs. At the rate you're going we'll loose the war and all the Germans will have to drive Fords instead of us driving Beetles. This should be fun !

Cheers, Christian B)
 
The Firefly isnt just a Sherman, its one of the coolest and that 17pdr inside gave it parity over a lot of German armour. It was so good that most have the barrel painted half way in green and then the forward half cammed. That was to make it look like a regular Sherman at the start of an engagement. Otherwise those where the first to be targeted. Looks cool Mike. Will be fun to watch.
James
 
Shalom.

I built the two Imperial Series Firefly tanks from Dragon many years ago. The individual link tracks were extremely tedious to assemble and I ended up buying Tamiya band tracks for mine although I had to get two sets for each tank because the Firefly has a longer hull that a normal Sherman. Now there are AFV Club)?) tracks made for the longer hull Shermans that should fit the Firefly if you have the individual track links in your kit and don't want to be bothered assembling them.

One other thing. Bronco has a very nice set of 17-pounder ammo and crates for their companion kit of the 17-pounder Pheasant anti-tank gun. My set of ammo was $14.99 Canadian and it has 4 trees with 8 rounds on each tree besides the other parts. There are 4 different types of shell in the set. You also get PE parts for the ammo crates and decals for the ammo crates and shells. You could use that ammo set to model a Firefly getting resupplied.

BTW, as someone else has mentioned, painting the gun tube to make it appear shorter became a very common practice once the Germans began targeting the Firefly tanks in a troop first before switching their fire to the less dangerous regular gunned Shermans.

Cheers from Peter
 
Construction started a couple Sundays ago, got all the bogeys built and with a little help from my friends, mastered the smoke dischargers. I ran out of time that day so took no photos and since a post without pix is like radio, did not post an update. Last weekend, my neck started feeling stiff and by Sunday AM, I couldn't move without stabbing pains! Several visits to the chiropractor have me almost back upright again, so I thought I'd post some photos.

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Parts H14 and H15 in step 3 are not clearly called out as far as placement or orientation and none of my reference pix show anything that resembles those parts. I sent out an SOS and got several very clear pictures and an explanation that these are smoke dischargers. Thanks Saul!!

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The bogeys were tedious to build, lots of parts to each one, but went together nicely, as did the hull.

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I used to think German road wheels were a pain!! I feel ALMOST good enough to get back to the bench, will post updates as they happen. Thanks for stopping by, comments and suggestions always welcome!! (y)
 
Thanks, Erik! I'm WAY out on a limb with this one! Learning a lot about the Sherman along the way!!

Thank you Bob! Hopefully, I can wrap this build up and start playing with the green by St Paddy's Day!

James, I'll need your expertise before long, thanks for hanging with me!!

Here's where I left off the other night. This business with my neck has made modeling quite difficult, but did string a little time in at the bench...

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Spare tracks and front end. I removed the rain gutter per the instructions, hope that was correct!!

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Fit on the turret was awful! Broke out the Green Machine to fill the imperfections, has anyone else had this trouble??

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A view from the rear.

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The kit PE is like iron!!

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Hopefully, the wire brackets that go aroung the lights, etc, will benefit from the stoutness of the PE! Anyways, I ran out of time off and had to wait until today to shoot pix. Comments, suggestions, questions always welcome!!
 
MIKE,

Shermans are as bad as Tiger I's when you try to track down all of th production changes - th when & where ! It's sometimes Mind Boggling ! :gogo Especially when kit manufacturers sometimes drop th ball.

After you build this , Try a Tasca Sherman. I've never built one but, I've heard & seen that these Kits are excellent fit all th way around.

I lookin forward to seein' this one !!


ERIK
 
Good to see you modeling again Mike:) :) Looks like a good start! Hope the neck heals quick so you can get some quality time at the bench!


Randy
 
Thanks, guys! I had to bug Saul again for some info, the main gun from my kit is pretty lumpy and a little warped, so the OOB thing is out the window!! I have a piece from LionMarc on the way, this build is going to move over on the bench until it arrives. I KNEW I couldn't build it OOB! Is there such a thing, really?? :idonno
 
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