Modeling the T-34 and itsVariants

Introduction

The Soviet T-34 was one ofthe most important armored fighting vehicles in WW II, and yetits presence in the 1/72nd scale model world was quite lackinguntil recently. To date, there have been only a handful ofinjection-molded plastic kits of the T-34 produced. Two of those(the ESCI kits) have been out of production for many years, andone, the AER T-34/85, does not demonstrate the finest modelmaking techniques available today. Luckily, we have recently beenprovided with another kit from Eastern Express (boxed as severalversions), which is a very nice model.

Resin manufacturers havetried to fill the gaps. Over the years, there have been numerousreleases of several variants of the T-34 in resin. Some of themare complete kits; most of them are conversion turrets, to beused with existing hulls. Many of the resin conversions are nolonger in production, and those that still are being produced,tend to be very rare, and difficult to obtain. So the obviousconclusion is that there is a need for new, injected-plastic T-34kits in this scale. PST has announced that they will soon alsorelease a line of T-34's, but it is unknown if they will benew-tool, or re-boxes of the Eastern Express kit. Revell AG. hasannounced a T-34/85 kit for late 2002, which will likely makemany of the resin releases superfluous.

Writing a comparativereview of all available T-34 kits is not as easy as the othercomparative review articles I have written, as there is littleoverlap between the versions of the T-34 which have been marketedover the years. There were a very large number of T-34 variantsproduced during World War II, but one common feature they allshared was the main hull of the vehicle, so the majority of thiscomparison exercise will focus on features of the kit hulls. Manydifferent wheel styles and turrets were introduced throughout thewar, several of which are available to model builders in one formor another, so with creative kit-bashing, and access to all ofthe available model kits, we can build pretty much any of thereally common T-34 variants.

There were severalself-propelled guns based on the T-34 hull, and three of themhave been released in either plastic or resin over the years. TheSU-85, SU-122 and SU-100 are all available from a variety ofmanufacturers. I have only seen the plastic kits of thesevehicles, so only they will be reviewed in this article.

I will begin the articlewith a discussion of the different naming conventions for theT-34. I'll follow that with tables of the many kits andaccessories available for the T-34, with hotlinks to variousReviews and Previews. The three manufacturers of plastic T-34kits, ESCI, AER and Eastern Express, will have extensive in-boxpreviews of their kits. Following those will be a shortcomparison of the available kits, with comparative parts scansand recommendations. And finally, I will close the article with abibliography of T-34 reference books in my possession. There area great many reference books available, and I will continuouslyupdate the list as I become aware of new books.

NamingConventions

There seems to be severaldifferent naming conventions used for the T-34. Steven Zaloga,author of many English-language reference books on the T-34, usesa system which differentiates between the oval and hexagonalturrets. However, it seems that most Eastern European authors,including Janusz Ledwoch, author of the WydawnictwoMilitaria T-34/76 book, uses a namingscheme which differentiates between the turrets with and withoutthe commander's cupola. Both of these systems label the tankswith a Year Model after the name, such as "T-34/76 Model1943". There is also a third naming convention which I havecome across in passing, but have not seen a complete listing of,which designates the variants with a letter after the T-34 name,such as "T-34/76c". This naming discrepancy must bekept in mind when reviewing the available kits, because the name"T-34/76 Model 1942" can mean different versions todifferent manufacturers.

I began this article withthe intention of tabulating the many versions of the T-34,showing the differences in the naming conventions for eachversion. But after about an hour of going through my books, andjotting down notes, I realized that such a task is beyond thescope of this article. There is such a wide variety of variants,and sub-variants, and sub-sub-variants, that in order to makethis article manageable (and timely), I will leave that task tothe other websites out there devoted to Soviet armor (there areseveral good ones). Instead, I will simply indicate within thekit reviews, which version is being modeled by that particularkit, based on the following, brief descriptions (from Zaloga):

T-34/76 Model 1940 (T-34/76A)

Early, oval-style turret, welded or cast, armed with an L-11 gun, which sits low in the gun mantlet. It has the early style driver's hatch, early tow shackles and rectangular transmission access hatch. Also had the early "plate" style tracks.

 

T-34/76 Model 1941 (T-34/76B)

Same basic vehicle as the Model 1940, but the L-11 gun was replaced with the F-34, which is the common gun and mantlet typically associated with the T-34/76.

T-34/76 Model 1941/42 (T-34/76C)

This was a hybrid version produced in Stalingrad (STZ), which included details from both the 1941 and 1942 versions. Specifically, it had the rear hull of the 1941 (rounded hull join and rectangular transmission access hatch) with front hull details similar to the 1942 (new driver's hatch and "hook" tow shackles). These hybrids also had all-steel wheels, and introduced the "waffle" pattern tracks.

T-34/76 Model 1942 (T-34/76D)

Similar to the Model 1941 (F-34 gun), but with a few changes to the hull. The driver's hatch was changed to the later style with two periscope covers, the tow shackles are now the "hook" variety, and the transmission access hatch is the later, circular style. The rear join line between the upper and lower hulls also changed, and became much sharper. Most of the turrets were of the cast variety, although there were also a number of welded types.

 

T-34/76 Model 1943 (T-34/76E = no cupola, and T-34/76F = with cupola)

This is where the turret made a complete change to the larger, hexagonal style, still with the F-34 gun. The hull is primarily the same as the Model 1942. There were several types of the hexagonal turrets, including hard-edged, soft-edged, laminate, and ChTZ (Uralmash). The last one is a very distinct, rounded cast turret, with an unusual dip in the lower side edges, but the first three can be difficult to distinguish in small scale.

(Thanks to Doug Clarke for providing the correct letterdesignations.)

I can't completely followthe scheme which Ledwoch uses (I can't read Polish). He seems tofollow the same scheme as Zaloga up to the Model 1942. Here, hecontinues to call the [Zaloga] Model 1942 a Model 1941. Hedoesn't switch to the Model 1942 designation until theintroduction of the hexagonal turret. He calls the hexagonalturret without a commander's cupola (T-34/76E) the Model 1942,and the hexagonal turret with a commander's cupola (T-34/76F),the Model 1943. But there are also two or three photos of theearly, oval turret which he also calls Model 1942, and I don'tunderstand why. If anybody could shed some light on this, I'dappreciate it.

Go To: The KitLists

Comparative Review

We now have seven plastickits of the T-34 from which to choose, although the two ESCI kitsare becoming hard to find (the four Eastern Express kits areidentical, except for the inclusion of the PT-3 mineroller in oneof them). In this section, I'll post some scans of the variouskit parts, comparing and contrasting the quality of each kit.I've added an Al.By T-34 kit into the comparisons as well,because it is such a nice kit. If I ever get my hands on anyother resin T-34's, I'll add them to the comparison also. Theself-propelled gun versions of the T-34 are not included in thiscomparison, because they are simply modifications to the existingT-34 kits. All of the below comments for the Eastern Express T-34are applicable to the SU-85 and SU-122. Likewise, the commentsfor the AER T-34/85 are also appropriate for their SU-100.Complete in-box Previews of all of these kits can be reachedthrough the above link to the Kit Lists.

Hull

As one can see, none ofthe kit hulls are truly bad. I'd say the roughest one of thebunch is the AER piece, because the engine grates aren't nearlyas finely molded as on the other kits, but even so, it's still afairly decent hull. I like the ESCI and AER hulls for having theoption of posing the engine screening hatch open if desired, butthe actual hatch on the AER kit (not shown) is not very welldone. The Al.By hull was originally based on the ESCI kit, sothey are almost identical, but the Al.By has some obviousimprovements made to it. I consider this piece to be the besthull of the bunch. My second favorite is the Eastern Expresshull. Although the engine screening hatch is molded on, thedetail is very fine, and I feel that the shape is more accuratethe other hulls. As one can see, the top plate of the hull isshorter than on the other kits, which makes the side walls a hairtaller, and the front glacis plate slightly longer. When comparedwith scale drawings of this tank, I think that this is closer toreality. However, this discrepancy between kits is not reallyapparent, unless they are sitting next to each other like this.

Dimensions

I scoured severalreference books for dimensions of the T-34, and came up with awide variation between measurements. I've taken the most commonones (which is also close to the average) and included them inthe following table:

It's obvious that none ofthe kits are too far off in any direction. All of the widths arepretty much exact, and the lengths vary from the true 1/72ndmeasurement by less than 2mm for all kits. Again, I think thatyou can only see the differences when the kits are placed side byside.

Turret

Since only two of the kitsare of the same version (ESCI and Eastern Express Model 1943),the turret comparison is only between those two kits. The otherturrets can be viewed on their appropriate Preview pages. Both ofthe 1943 turrets are very nice, with the ESCI turret just a bitsmaller than the Eastern Express example. When comparing theseturrets to scale plans, both appear to be a little bit smallerthan 1/72nd, but not by much. The ESCI turret looks to be about1/74th scale, and the EE turret is about 1/73rd.

The ESCI kit has theobvious advantage of open hatches, but other than that, I likethe EE turret better. The ventilator cover in particular, is verywell done. It also has very fine vision slots on the turretsides, which the ESCI turret lacks, plus nice bolt details aroundthe periscope. The EE commander's cupola is provided as aseparate part, and is molded with a closed hatch. The detail onthat part is very good. Although not shown, both of the guns andmantlets are very good.

Chassis

There is not a wide rangeof quality with these parts. Both the ESCI and Eastern Expressparts have more, and finer, details than the AER kit, but none ofit will be visible on the final model anyway, since the wheelsblock the view. If somebody wants to make a diorama with a T-34missing some wheels, then I would steer clear of the AER kit.Notice also the incorrect axle spacing on the AER chassis. Thereis a semi-circular ring of bolts extending up from rear sprocketmount, best seen on the ESCI part. I don't know what this is, butbased on my 1/35th scale T-34 kits, it looks exactly like what isshown on the ESCI kit part. The AER kit part looks wrong, and itis lacking entirely from the EE kit part.

Wheels

The wheels from all theplastic kits are in the top row, and various resin wheels in thebottom row for comparison. Basically, the plastic solid diskwheels are pretty good, while the plastic all-metal wheels arepoor. The AER wheel in particular, is very bad (poor depth ofdetail, and incorrect number of holes). If you want a piercedmetal wheel, I'd recommend buying an Al.By kit. As I mention inthe Al.By kit review, their wheels are spectacular, and I reallywish that Al.By would sell their wheels separately. The Al.Bysolid disk wheels are likewise incredibly well done. I guess thebest plastic wheel is the Eastern Express example, but the hubdoes not extend out nearly far enough. The Resin Master solidwheel is simply a copy of the ESCI wheel. The Resin Masterpierced wheel with rubber tire ("spider" style) is alsovery good.

Conclusion

My thoughts on these kitsis that none of them are truly horrible. The AER T-34/85 isprobably the weakest of the lot, but it is the only plastic 85mm version available. If you can get ahold ofthe a resin replacement turret, I'd recommend using it on eitheran ESCI or Eastern Express kit hull. Five different resin turretswere made at one time, but now, only the Leva, Al.By and Rhinopieces are still in production. Rhino also makes a completeT-34/85 kit, but I have not seen it to be able to comment on thequality of the hull and wheels.

If a person wishes tobuild an early T-34/76, the ESCI kit is the only choice, or aResin Master resin turret on an AER or Eastern Express hull. The1940 and 1941 Models are only available as turrets from ResinMaster. I recommend the Eastern Express Model 1943 over the ESCIkit, but not by much. Numerous resin turrets are available forthe various styles of 1943 turret, from Resin Master, Leva andAl.By.

The Al.By T-34 kit I ownis far superior to any of the other kits, primarily because ofthe awesome wheels. These are the only wheels which I consider to be excellent. All of the other plasticwheels range from good to poor. I am tempted to buy as many ofthe Al.By kits I can find, to use for various conversionprojects, and then sell the exta Al.By turrets to help defray thecost.

All in all, I think wesmall scale modelers are pretty lucky to have enough differentkits of the T-34 to be able to make such comparisons. Stillneeded is a new-tool kit of the early (oval-turret) versions, aswell as decent wheels. A new SU-100 would be a good idea also(Hello, Eastern Express?).

Bibliography

Ledwoch, J. 1997. T-34/76 .Wydawnictwo Militaria No. 38. Warsaw, Poland. 46pp.

Michulec, R., A. Wrobeland W. Klonski. 1998. Armor Battles on theEastern Front (1) The German High Tide 1941-1942 .Armor At War Series. Concord Publications. Hong Kong. 72pp.

Michulec, R., A. Wrobeland W. Klonski. 1999. Armor Battles on theEastern Front (2) Downfall of the Reich 1943-1945 .Armor At War Series. Concord Publications. Hong Kong. 72pp.

Unknown Japanese Author.1997. Soviet Military Vehicles of W.W.II .Ground Power No. 1997/9. Delta Publishing, Tokyo, Japan. 144pp.

Zaloga, S., J. Grandsenand D. Greer. 1983. T-34 in Action .Squadron/Signal Publications, Carrollton TX. 50pp.

Zaloga, S., and P. Sarson.1994. T-34/76 Medium Tank 1941-1945 .New Vanguard No. 9. Osprey Publishing, London, England. 48pp.

Zaloga, S., J. Kinnear andP. Sarson. 1996. T-34-85 Medium Tank1944-1994 . New Vanguard No. 20. OspreyPublishing, London, England. 48 pp.

Zaloga, S., J. Kinnear, A.Askenov and A. Koshchavtsev. 1997. SovietTanks in Combat 1941-1945 - The T-28, T-34, T-34-85 and T-44Medium Tanks . Armor At War Series. ConcordPublications. Hong Kong. 72pp.