Scale: 1:48th
Reviewer: Les Piper (November 2010)
What’s In the Box?
The Tamiya Cromwell kit is typical of the earlier releases in this line. 158 plastic parts are crisply moulded on 4 olive-green sprues, two of which are identical carrying the road wheels, sprockets and idlers and the link-n-length tracks. The pre-primed cast metal lower hull tub is secured in its own moulded package to prevent it moving around and damaging the plastic parts. A bag of screws and poly-caps, a length of twine for the tow-cable and the decals and instructions complete the package.
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Accuracy
The kit represents the most common “Type–C” hull used on the wartime Cromwell. Dimensionally it scales out very well against drawings, though as always, drawings can be wrong. Comparing the kits features and proportions to available period images revealed no glaring errors although the main gun looks a bit delicate, its not quite beefy enough for a OQF 75mm weapon and the muzzle-brake looks to be undersized to match. Turned metal replacement barrels are available if required.
Fit
Having built this kit in the past I’m aware of a number of fit issues that were reported after its release, gaps around the glacis and the rear hull panel and difficulty in getting the rear mudguards to fit correctly.
I’ve always found it helpful when building these kits is to remove the primer paint on the hull castings, it does actually mention this in the instruction sheets but a lot of people either miss or ignore this bit of advice.
Once the thick primer has been removed from the joining faces the fit will improve but test fitting and the use of a fine file to adjust the mating surfaces is highly recommended, even so a little filler may still be called for.
The turret parts assemble easily. Take care fitting the turret hatches if you want them closed, glue the two parts of each hatch together first on a flat surface and get them level, then fit them to the turret.
Adding the road wheels can try the patience as the fit to the cast metal axles is very slack allowing the wheels to end up at odd angles if care isn’t taken. A slow setting two-part epoxy glue and a metal straight edge will be a great help with this stage.
The only other problem I’ve encountered with this kit is that the hull-gunners side-opening hatch is a bit of a sloppy fit, if you want to pose it closed you might need to file and trim the inner edges of its top plate a little to get it to seat cleanly in the hull opening.
Read on about the quality and instructions supplied…
