I purchased a Tamiya Matlida Mk.II from ebay and just recieved it. It’s an older kit where the instructions are completely in Japanese. While I can easily follow the contruction steps I have a question about the optional mantlets. The kit provides two different ones and I wanted to know what the differences are. One has the fixed machine gun mount and the others seems to have a kind of jacket around the base of the cannon barrel. I’d like to model a ‘typical’ North African Campaign Matlida and would like to now which one of the mantlets best represents that.
Also for color, what did the British use for painting thier AFVs in North Africa? Is there an out-of-bottle color that represents this?
I yanked my Matilda out of the closet to see if I could help you, but then I remembered my Matilda is from Tamiya Brazil, and the instructions are in Portugeuse. Japanese, no problem, but Portugeuse, problem!
And not being a Matilda expert, I can’t rattle off any stats off the top of my head.
So, in other words, I can’t help ya!
Just wanted to let ya know that I tried, though!
I built the Tamiya Matilda when I was in high school, and fortunately, my kit had English instructions. If i remember correctly, this kit had an optional mantlet with a mounted flamethrower. I was just looking at my old Matilda yesterday and I was really amazed how well the kit stands up to today’s standards.
let me know how that works out, with the Matilda. After reading tons of books on north africa, i really want one, and the kit makes me curious. so let me know how the build goes and construction and such.
I’m relatively new to armor modeling and I’ve just started collecting WWII AFVs in the last few months. The Matlida is my latest aquisition. Like hooldum38 says, it holds up well to contemporary produced armor kits.
I chose the Matilda because I wanted a good representative of British armor in the North African Campaign and from what I’ve read the Matilda was fits that role perfectly. I may not start building untill late summer. I’ve got a few aircraft kits I want to finish up first.
