A Very Brief History of the Leopard

During the late 60’s Germany began to plan for new primary main battle tank which would replace the M48 Patton tanks purchased from the US (in service through 1993). Early designs were grouped around the initial concept called the MBT-70, though it never got past the initial design with only a wooden hull constructed. For several years numerous prototypes were designed leading to the Leopard I design in 1965, which used a German built 105mm Royal Ordnance gun. These tanks continued in use through 2003 and included 4744 main battle tanks.

This book provides great detail drawings of the American M36/M36B1 Tank Destroyer.

The US idea when going into WWII was to use tanks to support infantry and use Tank Destroyers against enemy tanks.

I found the photos and information in this book to be fascinating and many of the photos are ones not available anywhere else. The photos range from in production shots, in action and knocked out ones. All variations are covered in the photos and you see a lot of in action shots with the tank customized by each crew.

Along with the many photos from WWII there are great workarounds pictures full of fantastic details. These are indispensable for any modeler building this tank destroyer. You see so much detail in the walk around pictures which will make adding additional work to your model so much easier.

Each photo has a great description of what is in the picture, units using them, where and when.

If you are a student of WW2 German armored vehicles, or enjoy modeling subjects such as the German Panzer III and Panzer IV, then the name Tom Cockle should be very familiar to you. Mr. Cockle is a prolific author on such subjects, and has written or co-written books for Osprey Publishing, Concord Publications, Squadron Signal Publications as well as European publisher Peko Publishing. Mr. Cockle is also a frequent commentator on such matters on military vehicle model websites such as Missing-lynx.com. The book under discussion today is the 18thvolume in this wonderful series by Peko Publishing. I have 8 of the titles in the series so far, and plan on picking up others as my reference budget allows.

If you are a fan of the M1 Abrams, which has now been in service for over 30 years, David Doyle satisfies your visual needs with this book showing images of the XM-1, M1E1, M1A1, M1A2 SEP as well as some variants in between. For Abrams fans and modelers alike, the photographs provide a wealth of detail for the tank from the prototype through the M1A2 variant. The author provides many of the photos, but there are also plenty taken by the military that shows these tanks in action. Overall, this is a great visual history of the tank beginning with photographs of the XM1 in 1976 and concluding with the M1A1 and M1A2 in 2017.

When I was around 10-11 years old I got into a small scale armor kick. The local shop carried Airfix kits and I built a lot of their kits at the time. The first time I built the M3 Half Track it was a MPC release in their Battle of the Bulge Historama kit.

Fast forward 45, cough, years later and Airfix is re-releasing many of their kits under their Vintage Classics range. The kit appears to be the exact same plastic first released in 1966 including the 1 Ton Trailer. The kit includes 54 parts molded in an OD plastic. There is a bit of flash but what would you expect from a set of molds almost older than me. The kit includes some nice detail, a driver and one of the nicest small scale .50 caliber machine guns. Decals are included for an M3A1 during Operation Overlord. More about them later. The color scheme is shown in full color in the instructions. Other than that change the instructions look like they did when I first built it.