A Fashine(ting) Sherman
I have been
interested to convert an old Airfix Sherman into one carrying a fascine for a
while and it has not been very easy to find reference pics or comments.
I learned
that basically you have some Sherman II coverted into turretless vehicles used
by New Zealander engineers in North Italy in order to cross the Senio River. It
is not difficult to find pictures of these tanks approaching the creek on April
10th 1945. Some of them had a pair of simple rails above which the
fascine was meant to be released. More
often I found reference of a rotating structure placed above where the turret was and holding one or two fascines to be
released when the case. In the beautifully illustrated book Armour Color Gallery n.3 by Jeffrey Plowman we find few interesting shots like these:
On other
hand it seems that Shermans MKIII carrying fascines were adopted by the 1st
Polish Armd Div in France and Holland
in 1944. Apparently the Canadians also utilized the tank.
For as much
as Normandy is concerned John Tapsell very kindly explained to me that the
Staffonrdshire Yeomanry (27th
Armd Bde) had one troop of the reserve sq. (B) with these vehicles. Very
accurately he pointed out that three tanks were operative on D-Day and two were
hit in the afternoon of the 6th of June. They had a cradle fitted in
front of the turret though, more or less as in Italy, while the model used by
the Poles was simply with rails.
For sure it
was not a part of the Funnies of the famous 79th Armd Div. My desire
was to go for a version without the cradle and here it is.
