Cor blog me!: "Hell with it!"

To help fg get started on his US forces for Chain of Command, I thought I would build and paint up a Sherman tank for him.

Now I knew there were many variants of the Sherman, and I wanted one that would be reasonable to find in the "average" US unit from D-Day onwards. I did a bit of googling, and decided that an M4A1 with a 75mm would probably be my best bet. So off I went googling for a suitable easy-to-build kit. I managed to find a few, but the reviews of the kits I also found made presented another problem: none of these kits were "perfect" and the reviewers had to add various bits on to make the tanks "accurate"; and I'm not talking about stowage or camouflage here, but things like lift rings and applique armour.

After hours on the net, I decided "Hell with it!", I will buy a pre-painted model instead.

A little more googling got me the Easy Model series of pre-painted 1/72 models. I decided on this mid-production M4 from the 6th Armored Division, which did fight in France and Germany. Further googling identified this as a tank from a HQ company in the 68th Tank Battalion. It was close enough for my purposes.

As you can see from the first photo, the paint job is pretty decent, with some weathering and even soot on the muzzle of the gun. I suppose it can benefit from more weathering and stowage, but I will leave that to fg since it's going to be his tank.