Hey, you wacko tread heads! I’m ordinarily a wacko wingnut, but there’s one armor project I’d love to build. When I was at LZ Baldy with 2nd Btn, 5th Marines, there was a two-gun battery of 8" self-propelled howitzers right next to my platoon’s area. I’d love to model one, but haven’t been able to find a kit. Any of y’all know of a kit of this noisy sucker?
Wess Rodgers
Albuquerque, NM
wrodgers@spinn.net
ALBY I believe made a 1/72 version but Im not sure so try this site
http://ontheway.us/ Thier about the best 1/72 site around. I believe that the 8 inch and long toms shared the same chassis so maybe you could kitbash the 1/35 Italeri M110 self propelled kit with the AFV club Long Tom kit and get what you need but this a best guess on my part so I maybe wrong. Good luck and let us know how it goe’s.
Well your in luck got a little curious and started surfing about this and this is what I got AFV club does make a kit and heres a place that has it
http://www.hannants.co.uk/search/?FULL=AF35S06
I believe its about 27 pounds (I think thats about 40 something American)
The reason for my curiousity is that I had picked a bunch of 1/72 Hasagawa Long Toms from my favorite haunt for .99 cents apiece (10 to be exact but how could I resist) I then decided to buy hasagawas M-5 kit thinking Id put them together and voila. Well after spending as much on the M-5 as I did on all the Long Tom’s I find out that the M-5 didnt pull the Tom’s only the howitzer version.
Italeri does the short barreled M110 (#252) and long barreled M110A2 (#291) SP 8" howitzers. Revell reboxed the M110A2 with some West German fittings too. All three are the same basic kit as the original M107 “Mad Dog” kit with different barrels.
Y’all are awesome! See, if you want to know something, go to people with a passion for the subject. If I ever get a scanner that works, I’ll post my pics of “The Preacher.”
Thanks!
Wess
Glad to help.
verlinden used to make a conversion for the Italeri 1-35 M108 (175MM)
Sorry about the wrong model munber (M1108). The SP 105 had such a short life span I forgot about it, and kinda defaulted to that number for the 175.
To clear up some of the above confusion:
MAJ Rob listed the correct kits and vehicles for the 8" SP Howitzers.
M110 series is 8".
M107 was a 175mm howitzer on the same chasis as the M110.
M108 was a 105mm howitzer on the M109 chasis.
M109 series are all 155mm.
All the above are/were available from Italeri at some point.
AFV Club’s Long Tom is an M59 155mm towed howitzer, they also do the M115 8" towed howitzer, both WWII and Korean war vintage (a few M59s were used in Vietnam as well).
The one I’m looking for, then, is the M110. I hadn’t known that until today. Though I never had a chance to examine, in detail, the differences between the vehicle under the 175 and the 8", they looked very similar. There was just the slight difference in barrel length!
war story: I paid the crew of “The Preacher” two cases of beer to fire a round with the flash reducer, so I could get a good timed exposure of the muzzle flash. The flash reducer was a small bag of something that they put into the breech with the charge, and it reduced the muzzle flash from something that looked like a 55 gal drum of napalm going off to a little ball of red fire about 3 feet in diameter. The photo came out fantastic! When the prints came back, I ordered a copy for every man in my platoon, but I left the negatives on my bunk when I went to the head, and some ^&^%$()# stole my prints AND negatives! I left country before the next nighttime fire mission, and so never got another chance. humpf…
Wess
woops… that should have said I paid the gun crew to fire a round withOUT the flash reducer. That should make more sense!
Wess
Yup, the old 8" could belch out some major flames. Cool sight at night.