Crusader Mk. III

By Michael Hatch .

Manufacturer: Hasegawa

This is my HasegawaCrusader Mk III. The kit was built basically straight from thebox with only minor modifications.

It is meant to represent avehicle of the British 6th Armoured Division's 26th ArmouredBrigade in Tunisia during the winter of 1942/43.

I first inspected the kitto look for areas to refine or modify. These included thefollowing:

• Removing the molded-on shovel on the turret bustle
• Hollowing out the turret spotlight housing and inserting a MV Products #4 clear lens (LS 600, 1.8 mm)
• Adding the commander's sighting vane using plastic stock and steel wire
• Adding handles on the commander's hatch and the hull hatch covering the co-drivers space with soft steel wire
• Adding two antennas for the vehicle's No.10 wireless set again using soft steel wire
• Drilling out the muzzle of the Besa machine gun
• Drilling out the towing eyelets front and back
• Adding the towing shackles and replacing the plastic headlight guards with brass wire

As this vehicle only had atwo-man turret, which was very cramped, I choose to leave thecommander's hatches closed. I also didn't want to use theexternal fuel tank so I filled the mounting holes with crazy gluegel.

I left the engineexhausts, tracks and front and back dust-guards off until afterpainting. The base colour is Humbrol's old British Deep BronzeGreen mixed with white about 2 to 1. I then painted the rubber onthe road wheels Panzer Grey. The tracks were painted Humbrolgunmetal and when dry, given an orange watercolour wash. Whenthat was dry, they were rubbed down with a silver pencil crayon.The peg and hole ends of the tracks were cut off and then theywere crazy-glued onto the tops of the rear four roadwheels. Theends were then wrapped around the drive sprocket/idlers and glueddown under one of the roadwheels. This eliminates the connectionbulges that occur when using the manufacture's method ofconnecting the track ends together. (I must say, as far as softvinyl tracks go, these are very nice tracks. They were easy towork with and look good when finished.) At this point thedustguards were attached and painted. The exhaust system waspainted Model Master's Brunt Iron and while still wet, dippedinto baking powder. The excess baking powder was then knocked offand the exhausts were set aside to dry. When dry they wereattached and given a light wash of orange watercolour.

External stowage consistsof three small packs cut form vinyl British Infantry, tarps madefrom tissue paper soaked in a 50/50 solution of water and whiteglue and various tools from the spares box. The German jerry canis Leva resin. I added a tow cable made from fairly thin threaddipped in Humbrol steel paint.

Most of the decals weresupplied with the kit. The exception is the red square with thewhite 52 on it. This was from the decal spares box. The decalswere applied onto wet Future floor wax and allowed to dry for 24hours before decal setting solution was applied to them. Althoughthey are supplied on the kit's decal sheet the instructions don'tclearly show the placement of the red/white/red recognitionstripes on the hull stowage bins and hull front.

I am still looking forthree British helmets to stow about the exterior of the model andam going to add an American jerry can also.

This was a verystraightforward build and I really enjoyed it. The only problem Ihad with it was the commander's sighting vane but that was justbecause it was such a small fiddly bit. In hindsight, I think thesix-pounder gun barrel might be a bit on the heavy side but theoverall, the effect is nice.

Reference includedSquadron's out of print 'British Armor In Action', Osprey's NewVanguard 'Crusader Cruiser Tank' and Profile Publication's"AFV #8 Crusader".