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Having served on a Leopard 2A4 in the Dutch Army, I want to build my own tank, and wanted to have some idea as to how the kit would go together before going to town on that one. After picking up the new Concord book on the Leopard 2, I decided that I was going to build my “out-of-the-box” Leopard 2 as one of the German vehicles on winter exercise depicted in that book. Out-of-the-box. Right. Not. The more information I dug up, the more I had to add, change, or remove.

As the basic instructions in the Italeri kit are good, I will focus on the changes needed to turn the kit into a decent representation of a Leopard 2A4 (8. Baulos), explaining why I changed what I changed as I go along.

Changes made

Turret

There is a round cover plate on the rear turret roof (1), which was for the wind sensor on the early vehicles. This needs to be removed and sanded. On the late Leopard 2A4 turrets the ammunition-reloading hatch was completely left out, rather than welded shut, so the weld seams on the left side of the turret need to be sanded off (2). The ring for the commander’s hatch is only correct for very early vehicles, and has to be replaced with a scratch-built one, as shown in the pictures (3). I pressed a piece of note card onto the commander’s episcopes, as the new “ring” basically follows the outline of those, and then cut it out, about a millimeter outside of the lines of those episcopes. After transferring the shape I got onto 0.020″ styrene, I added the cutouts for the lifting eye and the commander’s periscope, as well as for the hatch and its lifting cylinder. The “ring” was then mounted on short sections of 0.010″ x 0.020″ styrene strip, cut to size and placed in the locations indicated by the round pins on the old ring. The loader’s hatch had a locking handle added (14). The 8. Baulos vehicles had SEM 80/90 radios, and the shorter antennas that went with those radios (the antennas are made of guitar string (4)). The phone cable reel had wire added to it (5), to cover the rough interpretation thereof on the kit part. The last thing to do to the turret was to replace the muzzle of the main gun barrel with the one from the Italeri Leopard 2A5 kit, #365, and scratchbuild a replacement muzzle reference system, or MRS (6). The last batches of the Leopard 2A4 used the same MRS as the Leopard 2A5, rather than the early version depicted in the kit. We never mounted those old ones, by the way, as they’d only vibrate off.

Hull

I replaced the kit tow cables with Tru Twist cables (7), using the kit cable ends. I’ve only recently gotten a set of Tru Twist cables from the guy who makes them; they’re beautiful, and really flexible. Later Leopard 2 MBTs have an orientation marker on the rear hull (8), so that the commander can orient himself with respect to the hull. I added the orientation marker on the right rear of the hull (this was made of guitar string as well). The 2nd and 3rd return roller were moved back one station, this was a change made to the suspension after the 5th batch vehicles, in order to better maintain the structural integrity of the return roller mounts (9).

To the left front of the driver’s hatch is a trapezoidal shape, this is the housing for two exterior warning lights, when driving with the hatch open; a piece of styrene was carved and sanded into the correct shape, and added in this location (10).

The NBC door on the left hull side is missing some of its seams; these were scribed on (11). The 8. Baulos vehicles had a newer type of light armored skirt, of the same style as the ones in the Italeri Leopard 2 KWS kit (#260). These differ somewhat in the shape of the steps of the ones in the Leopard 2A5 kit, #365, or the Tamiya Leopard 2A5, for that matter. I only used one section, as the rest were removed on winter exercises (12). I added the hinge for this section, and mounting points for the removed skirts (13). The mud flaps and rear light units were also removed on winter exercises, in order to prevent damage.  As the grousers were mounted on the tracks, the grouser mounts on the glacis were empty, and the racks had to be added from styrene. This feature was added after I had taken the pictures of the unpainted model. Hong Kong Creations Workshop Leopard 2 tracks with grousers were used. These are a pain to put together, as you have to remove every piece beforehand (track link, center connector, and two end connectors, with 84 links per side needed according to the instructions), but look great once put together. I think I spent about ten hours on mine, while watching TV (a necessary distraction’). Lastly, I used MV Lenses for the headlights.

General

In addition to the specific changes mentioned above, I replaced all small grab handles, lifting eyes, and mirror mounts with metal wire. The kit’s decals were added using Micro Sol and Micro Set, after which the vehicle was painted and weathered as follows.

First, the tank was airbrushed in NATO three-tone with Tamiya paints (XF-1 flat black, XF-64 red brown, and XF-58 olive green), and then a white wash added over the green camouflage color with Vallejo white. Based on the Concord book (see references), there are at least three other options for doing this: paint over the brown, the green and brown, or paint in a completely random pattern.

Subsequently, the tank received washes and dry brushing using oils, based on Chris Mrosko’s ‘Panzer’s Tactics’ (see references). The loader’s MG-3 was painted flat black with graphite rubbed on afterwards. I added ‘Wolf’s angel’ exercise markings from Scotch tape, painted yellow (Concord book, see references).

The base was made by Hammersmith Hobbies. The groundwork and mud consists of Hudson & Allen Groundwork with Hudson & Allen Slush and static grass mixed in, the snow is made from Alumilite Microballoons mixed with Liquitex Matte Medium, and the wet mud is a coat of Liquitex Gloss Medium.

Conclusion

As you can see, not much left of the out-of-the-box idea, but it was a lot of fun to build this Leopard 2A4 (8. Baulos). Now that this one’s finished, I’m ready to tackle my Leopard 2A4(NL), “Blake”.

Olav Kievit

References

1)     Christopher F. Foss, Ed., ‘Jane’s Armour and Artillery 1996-97′, Jane’s Information Group Limited, 1996.
2)     Walter J. Spielberger, ‘Waffensysteme Leopard 1 und Leopard 2′, Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart, 1995.
3)     Michael Scheibert, ‘Leopard 2 A5 Euro-Leopard 2′, Waffen Arsenal Special Band 17, Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, 1996.
4)     Walter B’hm, ‘Leopard 2/2A5′, Concord 7501, 1998.
5)     Thomas Laber, ‘Leopard 1 and 2 The spearheads of the West German armored forces’, Concord 1007, 1990.
6)     Michael Jerchel and Peter Sarson, ‘Leopard 1 Main Battle Tank 1965-1995′, New Vanguard 16, Osprey Military, 1995.
7)     Uwe Schnellbacher, Michael Jerchel, and Michael Badrocke, ‘Leopard 2 Main Battle Tank 1979-1998′ New Vanguard 24, Osprey Military, 1998.
8)     Peter Gudgin, ‘German Tanks 1945 to the present’, Tanks Illustrated No. 7, Arms and Armour Press, 1984.
9)     Chris Mrosko, ‘Panzer’s Tactics ‘ Painting and weathering military vehicles’, Volume one ‘ World War Two, Letterman Publications, LP 002, 2000.

The prototype appeared in 1948, and consisted of an all-welded hull, with five roadwheels with torsion bar suspension, and two return rollers. Driver (left) and engine (right) are at the front, with a Fives-Cail Babcock FL-10 oscillating turret at the rear, in which the commander is seated on the left, and the gunner on the right. An automatic loader with two six round revolver magazines occupies the turret bustle, the main drawback of which is the fact that the magazines have to be reloaded from outside the tank.

The AMX-13 has been uparmed with both 90 mm and 105 mm guns, as well as, in some cases, getting four SS-11 ATGWs mounted next to the original 75 mm gun (two on either side). In addition the chassis has been used as a basis for a number of other vehicles.

The Model

The kit (#81122) is a later version, one the Israelis never used, by the way, so I decided to backdate it using what little reference material I had. Tanks Illustrated 3, Israeli tanks and combat vehicles and Concord 7008, Tank battles of the Mid-East wars: (1) The wars of 1948-1973, both by Zaloga; The illustrated history of tanks, by Light body and Poyer; Taschenbuch der Panzer, by von Senger und Etterlin; and Modern Tanks & Fighting Vehicles, by Miller, all have a few pictures or drawings in them. I’m sure I’m still missing some details for a completely correct backdate, but this was what I had to work with. I used the first edition of the kit, in the green box, so I don’t know if the parts numbers would be the same for the re-release.

Construction – Hull

I started of with the lower hull, as per the instructions. It goes together well enough, but as it consists of bottom (two parts), sides, rear, front, and one supporting part, you need to make sure everything’s square. This is also where you need to make the first modification: fill and sand the second through fourth locations for return rollers, then mark the position for a new one. The Israeli version only had two return rollers. The new location will be 4.2 mm behind the first one, or between the third and fourth roadwheel, slightly closer to the fourth. Make sure it’s in a straight line with the sprocket, other return roller, and idler.

Also, remove the notches on the lower hull front, as these are for the splash plate, which isn’t needed. Adding the suspension is straightforward, but it looks kind of delicate, so be careful. I believe the glacis plate should be one piece (correct me if I’m wrong), so I sanded the joint between #13 and 19.

The upper hull, #85, lies on the hull sides, and requires seam cleanup (partly covered by panniers, though). The track guards are a real patience job, be careful of warping (why did they use clear parts?!). I left of #78, as I couldn’t figure out where to put it, and my references didn’t show it either.

The idlers are the wrong type, so I filled them with epoxy, sanded until I had hollow discs, and drilled six holes in them. #113 of the driver’s hatch is also unclear, and not shown in references, so I left it off, along with #95 and 96. As this version only has two headlamps on the glacis plate, I removed the other two, and made brushguards out of PE scrap for both lamps, and the extra lamp on the left pannier. The barrel lock halves are switched in the instructions, and need a clamp in the centre of the glacis. I added all hull details, except for #15, 40, 4, and 21. I filled the slots in the rear hull for the towing hooks, as they were too big, sanded the locator pins down and glued the hooks on with superglue. Lastly I decided to put a Hudson & Allen barbed wire roll under the barrel lock assembly to make it look a bit better, and use Accurate Armour’s resin tracks. It was the first time I used resin tracks like that, so it took some effort, and things didn’t work out quite the way I’d hoped, but on the whole I think I did alright for a first time. I have to say I was kind of disappointed at the amount of flash and bubbles on the track sections, though.

Construction – Turret

I put together the lower and upper turret halves while working on the lower hull. The upper half needs some TLC, but looks OK once done. You can add the connector pins, #77, from the bottom, so the roof can be added at this stage. As the Israeli version didn’t have a canvas cover, I sanded this off the mantlet at this point. Also, you can leave off the SS-11 assembly, including the guidance box on the turret roof (#122 and 123), and sand off the mounting tabs for the box, as the Israeli’s never got this assembly. Be careful when fitting the turret pins, as the holes don’t quite line up. I drilled out the holes for the turret handles etc. The fit of the gunner’s sight (#66) is awful, and there are ugly ejector marks on the antenna bases. The upper smoke dischargers need to be angled out more, so you need to sand the mounts down somewhat. Lastly, I used guitar string antennas.

Finishing

For the painting I used Tamiya XF-60, close to the paint chip for an Israeli upgraded 1973 Centurion in AFV-G2 Vol.6 No.8. Details were picked out as necessary (tires, lights, exhaust, etc.), after which I used Micro Kristalkleer to replicate the episcopes. I used dry transfers from one of Verlinden’s Israeli sets, another first for me, and quite a nice surprise, as they went on very easily. The whole was then given an oil paint wash, a dry brush with lightened base colour, a coat of Hudson & Allen “Mud”, and mounted on a simple base.

Conclusion

Not exactly easy, but a good learning experience, and I rather like the final result, especially considering the quality of the kit.

Olaf Kievet

The Kit

The kit, as released by AFV Club, is as much a hybrid as the real tank, consisting of sprues from Academy/Minicraft’s M60A1 and M48A5, AFV Club’s M88 (roadwheels), along with two AFV Club sprues specifically for this kit, and their single link M60 tracks. Unfortunately, they decided to make one sprue with those parts coming from Academy/Minicraft sprues you’d only need one or two parts from, and made a number of errors in doing so. As a result of this “combination effort” you also end up with two “B” sprues in the box, which was rather confusing at times.

Construction

Construction starts of with the lower hull and the suspension, but before adding the suspension I installed the driver’s hatch in the upper hull and added both this and the rear hull to the lower hull. Here you’re already missing the tab that usually connects the rear and upper hull, and the poly cap for the front of the upper and lower hull; not a big issue, but still. The centre driver’s episcope in my kit was only partly molded, which I fixed with some glue and sanding. Biggest job while adding the roadwheels is that, coming from AFV Club’s M88, the holes are too small to accept the Academy/Minicraft axles, so you have to drill out all 14 sets. On the rear hull you’re expected to use the M48 hinges on the M60 doors (!), so I made correct ones using the parts from my M60A1as a template. The rear lifting hooks have ejection marks in them, which need careful filling and sanding. The mudflaps (Z34-35), are the wrong shape and need to be reworked or scratchbuilt. During the addition of detail parts to the upper hull I found out that there are ejector marks on the tops of the large toolbox lids and the brushguards, as well as sink marks on the AFV Club copies of the air filters, for which they also chose to change the construction, resulting in a rather bad fit. While adding the hull detail I like to start on the turret halves, not a big deal normally, but in this case the gun mantlet caused a fair amount of extra work. First of all, the interior cylinder has it’s asymmetrically mounted pins the wrong way around; they need to be switched, and then lined up properly using the turret. Second, the part sticking out from the rear of the mantlet, supposed to be glued onto the cylinder, is sticking out about a cm, whereas the top should be even with the rear of the actual mantlet. You need to cut of this part, otherwise the mantlet sticks out too far. I used the M48A5 parts as guides for these changes, and the gun to make sure the two parts went together well after cutting of part of the mantlet rear (the gun looks pretty good, by the way). Also, don’t forget to add some plasticard to the interior of the upper turret half, behind the rectangular hole in front of the loader’s hatch – you don’t need this hole and it’ll need filling. Turret details, turret details. There’s a fair amount of (extra) work to be done on the turret, starting of with making sure you have the right parts. Part B14 should be Z12, B14 is the unidentified part of the turret ventilator above. There are only 2 parts Z12 in the kit, rather than the necessary 3, so I used C16 from the M60 sprue as a replacement for the forward mounted lifting eye (not quite the same shape, but it works). The smoke dischargers need lots of filling and sanding to get rid of sink holes and ejector marks; when mounted (don’t forget to fill and sand the holes on the turret meant for the South Korean type smoke dischargers from the M48A5 kit), with solder wiring added, they look decent.I replaced the gunner’s sight cover Z22 with D39 from Tamiya M60A3 leftovers, which has the same shape, but looks better. You can also add Z23 at this point, as it’s the armoured cover for the sight, and can be slipped in between the sight and the sight cover Z22. You’ll need part E10 from the Academy/Minicraft M48A5 (no problem if you have the kit and are planning to build the Korean version), which has to go in front of the loader’s hatch as shown in the drawings in the instructions. Alternatively, it is relatively simple to scratchbuild this part. It’s very unclear as to where the rail for the loader’s machingun is supposed to go, I used Squadron/Signal’s M48 book to get a bit of an idea. I couldn’t find the handle for the commander’s hatch, which wasn’t indicated in the instructions either, so I used Z39, supposed to go on the inside of the loader’s hatch, which I left closed anyway. The locating “rectangle” for the jerrycan/watercan needs to be wedgeshaped, as otherwise the can’ll sit too far off the turret at the top. Be very careful with the infantry bars, there fragile and need a lot of cleaning, but look OK in the end. The smokedischarger grenade boxes need new mountings according to the instructions, it’s not quite clear how you’re supposed to add the new pins, but with some trial and errors it worked out for me (I assumed I’d need 4 pins, rather than the 3 indicated in the instructions, by the way). The turret basket is missing the two centre brackets, which AFV Club forgot to copy, so I made new ones from plasticard using the M48A5 ones as template. AFV Club also substituted cable ends and nylon wire for the plastic tow cables from the Academy/Minicraft kit, but forgot to include new mounting hooks for under the turret basket, which I added from lead foil. I used pieces of guitar string for antennas. As for the machineguns, they’ve got two ugly ejector marks each, which is a pitty, because other than that they look nice. Be careful with the cradle for the M60, it’s quite fragile. The ammobox for the M60 seems to have to go onto the cradle, instead of the M60, as indicated in the instructions, as it won’t sit properly otherwise. After all this was done I just had the tracks left. “Just”, right! This was my first experience with these single link tracks, it took me 5-6 hours to put them together, and then I still wasn’t carful enough with them afterwards, so I have some broken links on the tracks, and cracks in connectors. Here the last problem showed up, they wouldn’t fit AFV Club’s own (new) sprockets very well, which also contributed to the state of my tracks, of course.

Finishing

This is quite straightforward, the whole tank’s olive green, with the details painted according to the instructions, after which I added the decals for one of the two ROC Army options, followed by a wash and a drybrush, and mounting on a simple base.

Conclusions

The kit leaves something to be desired, most of which could’ve been prevented if AFV Club had done better research, mainly to make sure all necessary parts would be there. I can understand why not all companies do as DML, adding a sprue for a single part, but if you’re going to make a sprue for that collection of parts, make sure everything’s on it. Other than that, they could’ve put some more thought into where you can and cannot afford to have ejector marks. Having said, that, I did enjoy building the kit, and I’m quite pleased with the result, as I guess were the judges at AMPS98, who awarded me a bronze medal in Intermediate for it. I’d recommend it for Patton fans and modern armour fans in general, but not at the MSRP, I’m afraid.

Olav Kievit