Building Military Wheels' 1/72nd Scale T-34-85 Repair Retriever with Winch By Michael Kendix

Background

The Soviet Union's T-34 tank is well known to most students of World War II history as one of the most successful medium tanks, indeed of any tank, during that conflict. Its later variant, the up-gunned T-34/85, of which approximately 22,000 were produced, continued in service after the War's end. Post-war service saw it used in numerous locations around the world but also in the U.S.S.R. itself, not only as a regular tank but also as tractors and repair retrievers. Apparently, in the initial post-war period, the U.S.S.R. was short of regular machines for these purposes and converted the readily available T-34/85 tanks to serve as such.

In the Box

The box itself is a nice top opener, as opposed to those less convenient side-opening boxes. Inside there are no fewer than six sprues. Four of the sprues are for the main body of the tank, a fifth contains the running gear and the sixth has the link and length tracks. There is a similar Military Wheels kit that has a T-34/85 set up for a slightly different set of mechanical tasks: one major difference is that the kit I built has a big digger attached to its rear. The plastic is quite well molded with some flash and molding seams that require clean up. Fortunately, the plastic is a little on the soft side, so the clean up is easier. The parts look a lot like some of those in the Eastern Express kit: indeed, the tracks and wheels look identical, which was comforting because if I ran out of tracks on this one, I had some tracks left over from a previous model. The instructions are decent and of the exploded view variety: enough to do the job for the most part.

Construction - the Hull

This kit actually has a rudimentary interior so if you so desire, you can risk having the hatch in the open position. The interior parts consist of a couple of seats, three control columns, and some foot pedal controls, at least I think that is what they are. I did not plan to open the hatches but I glued the interior bits in just the same and sprayed the interior with the main colour - I used Model Master's Acryl #2 Green - a mid-to-dark flat green. Do not forget to spray the upper and side parts of the interior. At this point, since you have set up the airbrush, it is also a good idea to spray some of the other parts, like the running gear, which are a lot easier to paint on the sprue: they also have rubber rims that need to be painted. Once the hull interior paint job had dried, I glued the hull pieces together. The fit was decent but there is a quarter-inch gap on the underside of the fender area over the wheels. The Eastern Express T-34's have the same construction issue: you can either leave it and not worry about it or do as I did, and fill it with a strip of plastic on either side. A similar issue appears on the Eastern Express SU-85; for example, see Matt Bittner's construction in an earlier edition of Internet Modeler.

Construction - Hull Bits and Pieces, Plus the Digger

All the pieces that are located on the top of the hull went on easily enough. Each piece had to be cleaned up carefully but once that was done, things looked decent. One exception was the small caliber gun on the front of the hull, which I replaced with the redundant part from the Eastern Express OT-34 (it has a flamethrower instead). I glued on the trapezoidal piece that just about covers the turret hole - fortunately, the open-top box crate thing on the top of the hull covered the remaining part of the turret hole. However, I held off gluing on the box crate, preferring to spray it separately. How else would you be able to paint the crate's underside? Finally, I glued on the digger and took the subassembly down to the basement for airbrushing. Once everything had dried nicely, I wondered why the digger was at such an odd angle. I realized that I had glued it to the front instead of the back of the tank. Out came the Exacto knife and the sanding sticks. I reattached it in the correct position and re-sprayed.

Running Gear

As I mentioned above, the running gear are the same as the Eastern Express kits'. The wheels are quite nice and the link and length tracks, while requiring some patience in construction, fit well enough. I painted the tracks rust and dry brushed layers of dark grey and silver until I arrived at an acceptable appearance. In fact, the first side I glued, fit exactly. For some reason, on the other side, I came up one-quarter of a track short. To correct this I used a tip from Shep Paine's book; I cut off the small idler wheel and moved it slightly inward so the tracks had less length to cover. I reattached the idler wheel, and glued on then glued on the track.

Odds and Ends

The kit supplies a tarpaulin role and a ditching beam/log. Neither of these looked too convincing, especially the log. Also, I thought it would be difficult to get the tarpaulin role to sit right on the top of the hull. Following the method in Paine's book, I made my own tarpaulin roll using Kleenex™ and thin string. I carved a new beam from a bamboo chopstick that I stained and dry-brushed with dark brown paint. Finally, I made the towropes from kit string having first hollowed out the ends of the eyelets supplied in the kit.

Weathering

I gave the entire model a couple of burnt umber oil washes, using oil paint thinned with Turpenoid™. Following that, I used a silver Prismacolor™ pencil to highlight the edges and prominent bits of the model. I also went over the tracks with a lead pencil to add effect. Finally, I added some weathering using pastel chalks - various browns and greys. I gave the entire assembly a coat of clear "Dust" acrylic to seal things in and added the MV lenses into the lamps.

Conclusion

This is a decent kit that builds into a fairly unusual model. For me, the attractiveness is the model's uniqueness but if you are a T-34 fanatic, it would be a nice addition to your collection of T-34 variants. The Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for these kits is $19.98, which is entirely too expensive, in my view. However, if you can get one for $12 or less, that would be fair. I bought this kit and its almost identical twin "T-34/85 Repair Retriever" for $2.99 each on sale from Squadron Mail Order, which was a great bargain. Recommended.

Reference

Sheperd Paine. "Modeling Tanks and Military Vehicles," Kalmbach Books, Kalmbach Publishing Co., 21027 Crossroads Circle, Waukesha, Wisconsin 53187, U.S.A. 1982.