Here’s my Korean War dio, “Street Fight”, with a Tamiya Pershing and figures from Dragon. The rail road and power line pole are from Verlinden and the tracks are AFV T80E1. My references include Oscar Gilberts’ Marine Corp Tank Battles in Korea (Casemate Pub.), Zaloga’s M26/46 Pershing Tank (Osprey), and various web sites.
I was inspired to create a scence from the battle of Seoul after looking at pictures of the Marines in the city. Here are my reference photos.
The sand bags are Tamiya and looked very boring and seemed to not fit in, considering they had three molds. In reality, the North Koreans used rice bags filled with dirt as a barrior. I pasted gauze bandage to them and painted it.
Interviews from veterans stated the power and cable lines were down everywhere and the cables got entangled around the turrents, restricting their ability to traverse.
From this picture, you can see the rail road tracks are really street car rails. In my dio, I just didn’t have the courage to cover up the beautiful mold details and painting I had rendered with dirt over the ties and gravel.
I wish to thank those people that posted their Pershing tank comments on this forum, especially the Korean War builds. It helped quite a bit.
[#welcome] Stunning Greg. I really like the simplicity of this dio. The sandbags look great. I love the Pershing and the working suspension adds character. Thanks for sharing.
I used the AFV T80E1 tracks since Pershings in the Korean War used those tracks. The build was fine however one needs to decide on making the track suspension static or in flex postion. Since I decided on making a dio, how I laid out the suspension came into my design. Also, if you decide to make a Perhing based on Korean War, assembling the T80E1 track set is time consuming. The Tamiya provided tracks are WWII type.
Very nice work! Great use of the Dragon Iwo Jima Marines with the M26. An interesting note is on one of the upper photos it appears what may be an M26A1. The head on shot shows what looks like a bore evacuator on the main gun tube. The Marines used folded up side fenders or field added wire racks to hold ammo cans on the fenders. Also I have seen many photos of Marine Pershings in Korea with the earlier single pin tracks, especially in their earliest periods of use (Pusan, Inchon). It’s really great to see a depiction of “the Forgotten War” in a diorama![tup]
Very nice…sandbags are hard to get to look “right” in dios…you managed to pull it off…nice touch to add actual pics of the battle scenes you were trying to replicate…I am a big fan of research…nice job…
very well executed diorama!
Loved how you finished the sandbags.
I do wish though there’s the section of building to convey it’s in Korea as bit hard to see where this scene is located from the diorama… Just minute nick picking~ ^ ^
Looks great, especially the Pershing. The finish on the tank has just he right “sheen”–it isn’t dead flat, but it isn’t glossy and toy like. It seems like a minor detail, but it makes the difference between a painted plastic look and a weathered metal look.
