Best Sherman Kits

Modeling Subjects Armor
1

Which currently available 1/35 Sherman kit is the best out-of-the-box?

Thanks.

John

2

I haven’t built a lot of Shermans, but I recently finished Tamiya’s M4 Sherman (early production version). It’s one of the newer Tamiya kits, having been released in the last 2-3 years. I was very pleased with the assembly and the detail on the parts. A good quality kit. The kit gives you a few in-the-box options - choice of different styles of road wheels, drive spockets, etc. Their one-piece tracks have improved as you can glue them together with regular model cement and they look good enough you don’t have to worry so much about hiding the place where you glued the track together.

I built the older Tamiya kit M4A3 Sherman 7-8 years ago and the newer kit is a large improvement over the old one. More detail, etc.

3

Depends on if you want an early or late WW2 tank, a Korean war tank, an Israeli variant, etc. DML Shermans are very nicely done and they cover the whole spectrum of usage.

4

I am interested in an early WWII.

5

Tamiya’s early production M4 is very good.

6

Tamiya’s M4 is a very nice build, extremely well engineered and just about builds itself. The most glaring mistake on this kit (and all Tamiya Shermans) is that it does not have the bottom of the sponsons filled in so if you want to build it with open hatches you have a great amount of open space under there. The good news on this is that it is an easy fix.
DML has or has had some great Sherman kits. They have the M4A1, M4A4 and Sherman Vc Firefly kits that are just fantastic. Unfortunately the M4A1 and M4A4 kits are OOP at this time but rumour has it the M4A4 is going to be re-released shortly. That leaves the Vc Firefly which can be hard to get at times. All DML Sherman kits come with indy tracks that can seem a little overpowering to a person that has never built these before. But stick with it and you will find that they make a great improvement over the rubber band tracks.
Hope this helps John.

7

Thanks Robert. Yes, it helps a lot. I kept waiting for “SHERMANFREAK” to make an appearance. Figured you had built a few!

John[:D]

8

Glad I could help John … but all I did was confirm what the others had already said. There are many knowledgable modellers involved on this site and that’s what makes it good to be involved here.