Cromwell Mk. IV

Manufacturer: Revell AG.

by Till Huber

Construction went straightforward, I did not find any imperfections or fit problems so thisReview won't be that long at all. I left the Hedgerow cutter off,as I don't have any references that confirm the usage on aCromwell.

CAMO AND PAINTING

As base colour I tookHumbrol No. 105 which is a US armour color. I've attempted tofind any references about British late war armour green and Ithink this colour is the best match. As mentioned in the previewI am not a friend of mixing colours to match the right tonebecause there are so many viewpoints you can look at this topic.Some modellers take the scale effect into consideration bylighting up the base colours, some do not; Some compare theircolour with a real sample taken from vehicles (especially theairplane guys!) and finally some modellers say that sticking to astrict colour formula is not accurate at all due to enviromentaleffects, such as exposure to sunlight (bleaching, water, mud,corrosion etc...). I think I'm going to use my airbrush to applysome road dust texture on the lower parts of the tank. It stilllooks too clean for me.

I painted the tracks ingunmetal grey; after this I mixed some Fe2 O3 powder with waterand applied this on the tracks. The next step was to silver thetracks which I supposedly overdid.

The decals are very niceand accurate, although my reference does not show the whiteallied star on the turret top. The big white star decals are verydifficult to apply due to the bolted armour design of thecromwell. Definately it is better to leave them off until you usea decal softener but I haven't tried this myself yet. I wonder ifthe British tanks were loaded with the same amount of stuff onthe outsides like German tanks had been. If so, my job is farfrom being finished yet ;-)

I think I only bought thekit because it was a NEW one :-)