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.

The Vehicle

The T-72 series was the most produced post WW2 tank. It is designed to have a low silhouette and smaller hull than most modern tanks. The crew is only three soldiers, with ammunition loading being done automatically. Due to the cramped crew positions, the maximum height of a T-72 soldier is 5 feet 9 inches.

The T-72 gun is a 125 mm capable of firing HEAT and APFSDS rounds, as well as ATGMs.

There are 40 different countries who have significant numbers of T-72s. In spite of an arms embargo, Iraq had 1000 T-72s in 1990. In 1996, this number had reduced to 375

The Kit

This kit is all resin, with no PE or other media parts. The markings schemes are for 4 different armies, Czech, Polish, North Vietnam and Soviet. The Soviet markings require no decals.

The Vehicle

The Renault FT (the 17 was added after World War I) was the first modern tank to reach production. The big advance over previous armored vehicles was the armament in a fully rotating turret, which allowed the tank to shoot without maneuvering. There were over 3,000 FTs built in France during the war, and there were 950 M1917 light tanks built in the United States. None of the US built tanks were completed in time to see action in the war, but France lent 144 FTs to the US Army in mid-1918.

There were many users of the FT, including Afghanistan, where 4 were discovered by US Forces in 2003, Belgium, Brazil, China, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, and 19 others, including Nazi Germany.