I finally arrived at the last of the Americans (but not the last of my project vehicles). I finished up everything but the M-3 Halftracks. The reason I saved these for last was all the storage I wanted to add. Like everything else, I got these up to the decals stage.
The M-3s are PSC plastics. Back when I was buying these, I kept going back and forth between these and the Battlefront plastics. Fortunately for me, I was able to get these on a big discount, so that made the decision. I assembled all these and then collected all the various stowage I had in my collected, from various convention buys. The M-21s are some old Battlefront resin models. The stowage is a mix of stuff from the PSC kits, Battlefront WWII and Israeli kits and some added items from Here 46 (which they sadly no longer offer). I glued on some stowage (the racks on the back of the halftracks) and left the other stuff separate. The separate items were all sprayed tan and later hit them with a brown wash.
These followed the same steps as the early lend lease project vehicles. I sprayed the models with Krylon dark olive camo paint, hit the bottoms with Vallejo dark mud pumice, black washed the tank, drybrushed up the green and brown, painted details.
With my decals in hand, I got these back on track and added them. I then glued on all the loose stowage, added the decals, added and detailed stowage. I then hilighted the khaki items with khaki and painted some other brown, light tan or green to give some variation, similar to the work on the Shermans. I did another drybrush of mud to the upper areas to blend in the decals. I hit them all with dull coat and finished up with a Iraqi Sand drybrush like the other models to finish them up.
I am pretty happy with the look. However, I think they would look even better with some crew…. Guess I need to have another project to buy and paint up passengers project!
With that, my US forces are done (with the exception of maybe added passengers…). Next up are the Free French, which ironically is what got me started on this project…..
- Mantueffel