I took the turret from Tamiya’s Sgt. York and mounted it on a AMT-ERTL Abrams hull . Thats an old kit with poor detail . Theonly modification required was making the turret ring opening in the hull smaller which i did with some sheet styrene . The camo is my own creation .The lenses are made from reflective party decorations .
Here is the finished camo with a gloss coat .
I decided to dirty up the surfaces to represent boot and shoe marks made by military and contracter testing personal . This vehicle would have been a one off vehicle to further test the capabilities of the Ford Aerospace DIVAD submition . The Sgt. York was a failure not only due to its inadequate air defense capabilities but also due to its M48 based chasis inability to keep up with the M1 Abrams and M2/ M3 Bradley . Perhaps the M1 chasis under the M247 20 ton turret could have improved that performance .
Dirtied up .
I used ground up pencil lead rubbed over a base of flat black to represent the well cleaned and polished 40 mm Bofors .
I figurds that after a hard day of banging around inside the hull and turrett out in the desert proving grounds the crew would have had a nightly schedule of meeting at a local tavern for a few brews to discuss problems and achienements . Going to work every day in this aluminum can would make a person look forward to the end of the day and a few cold ones . So the crew named it Sudsy . The decal i found off of an old auto kit sheet .
Glad to see it back. As I mentioned before, I built this “what if” about 10 years ago when I first moved to Massachusetts. I’ve moved twice since then and I do recall securely storing the kit in a shoe box with some packing peanuts and tissue, but I doubt I could locate that box any time soon.
Yours looks way better than mine; I went with a Desert Storm era overall sand paint scheme. I started with the Tamiya turret and Tamiya original M1 hull that I updated and detailed into an M1IP hull, although if I was to re-try the build, I’d start with Dragon’s M1 Panther II hull. Better detail and no need to update. I carefully cut the turret ring off of the bottom of the Tamiya turret and simply glued it to the underside of the York turret. Fit perfectly and worked like a charm.
I found photos (maybe in the Hunnicutt book?) with the commander’s station equipped with an M60 machine gun. I used the one from the Tamiya M151A2 Jeep. I added the M1’s smoke grenade launchers and made resin copies of the grenade stowage boxes from the Tamiya M60A3 kit.
I did some work to the turret top based on photos posted by Steve Zaloga some time ago. I do recall rebuilding and detailing the engine grill area. I know I added my tow cables to the turret rather than the hull as you’ve done.
It was an interesting and fun project. I hope you got as much enjoyment out of yours as I did from mine. I was surprised how big the thing turns out. It sits much taller than and Abrams. I assume only one or two would support a tank or mechanized infantry company/team. It would be such a large target. I contemplated adding ERA panels to the turret slopes, but thought that it would be a little much.
Thanks Shellback! Looks great, cool, interesting and certainly futuristic! Too bad that it was never meant to be. Nice job on this (as well as the 247) and nice to have you back!
After reading the idea’s of[color=red] Robs [/color] i’m thinking i may go out and find another Sgt. York kit for a future what if project . The posibilities are endless . And like [color=red]agent.g [/color]said with the new technology its possible this vehicle could be effective as a DIVAD .
Thought i’d repost this picture of the entry that General Dynamics put up against the Sgt. York . From what i read it used the same target tracking system as the CIWS , Phalanx . The radar was mounted on the front of the turret . The cannons were twin Oerlikon 35 mm cannons …
…like those used on the German Gepard .
Ratheon proposed using the turret from a Dutch version Gepard that could modified to mount on the M48 chasis …[I]… i have the Tamiya Gepard and that unused M48 hull in my stash !!!This time i would update the rear of the hull to represent more closely this M247 at Yuma Proving Grounds .
Nice to see this one again! What-ifs are usually confined to the realm of post-WW2 but I like this application to a modern system more…and it sounds like you’ve got some inspiration for future projects as well that would be equally cool to see done. [B]
One more thing …did anyone notice the tracks on my kit ? Their the vinyle tracks off of the Testors Leopard II . The tracks that came with the Ertl kit were link and length and looked too flimsy .
How about a Gepard turret on a Panther II hull? Could be some kind of alternate history WWII scenario. Lots of holes in the story, but might look cool.
The footprints . I ground up some chalks of that color into a small container and added a little window cleaner to it …just enought to make a paste . Then i used the end of a wooden tooth pick that i had shortened and shapped to roughly the correct shape to dab the paste onto the model . Further shapping was done with another sharp tooth pick .Its tediouse !!!
