IPMS Kit Review: Dragon 1/72 Firefly Vc

Part 2: The Build, Completed & Some History

The first thing I do is paint the parts on the sprue trees. When dry, assembly begins. Each four part suspension bogie unit is designed to simplify assembly without sacrificing detail (the two bogie wheels are molded as one part), with the exception that there's no detail on the backside of the wheels, where the sun doesn't shine. Once assembled you'd never know. Make sure you've lined up the wheels with the "axles." This kits idler wheels DO have detail on the back, while most 1/35 scale kits don't! I used Zap A Gap CA+ and where I wanted extra strength, I touched it with accelerator. I left the drive wheels off until later on when I attached the track.

All hatches are separate and detailed front and back. You have a choice of plastic or p.e. periscope covers and brush guards. The sponsons are closed but there's no interior in the hull (or turret), so you'll want to close the hatches or add crewmen. I closed the hull hatches.

In step one when you attach the vertical rear hull part A53 to the bottom, you'll notice the two triangular extensions stick out at an odd angle. Don't worry, that's correct and mates up with part A52 properly. Along the way you have to decide where you're using p.e. parts or plastic. Also keep an eye out for the symbol telling you to drill out holes or remove parts. For example, DML tells you to remove the transmission cover's plastic 'ears' for the tow shackles, and replace them with the etched brass parts. If you've opted like me to just cement the tow shackles to the plastic ears, don't remove them!

[Assemble hull before adding small parts.]

First off, I decided too to leave off all the smaller parts like these until my final assembly step to avoid breaking them off during handling the model. DML would have you attach all of the small parts to the hull top and then mate the top and bottom hulls in the end. I cemented top and bottom hull parts early on as step 4, and then added the small parts afterwards. No crew figures are provided so I opted to close the driver and assistant driver's hatches. I used white glue thinking that at some later date I might want to pop them off and add crewmen. As a hint for all small scale mfrs, nobody makes plastic WWII allied tank crew figures in 1/72 or 1/76 scale! There are some expensive metal and some resin figures, mostly from the U.K.'s Milicast, MMS and AB. The Firefly I'm modeling has the British stowage box (parts A50, 51) attached to the rear as shown, but some had them in the front of the tank. Check your references. By the way, DML gives you a separate part for the box top so you could pose it open and show some stowage in it!

I worked on the turret next. The rear turret radio and stowage box tops could be left open if you want to add a radio and stowage. I chose to build Sgt. Gordon's #12, which was one of the most underrated tank and crew of the entire war. According to a color sideview drawing in Steve Zaloga's D-DAY TANK WARFARE, Gordon's Firefly didn't have the extra stowage box after the radio extension to the turret rear so I left it off.

[- The directions are vague - you're supposed to glue the mantlet frame inside the turret, then glue the mantlet to it from outside the turret.]

According to that aforementioned reference, the referenced books by Jean Restayn and Ludovic Fortin and the Military Modelling article (which features a Firefly named "Carole"), drawings and photos suggest that D-Day Fireflies didn't have appliqué armor or an AA machine gun either (what a nice one it is), so those parts went into the spares box too. The slide molded 17 pdr gun barrel muzzle brake is "drilled out." I used a flex-i-file to sand the gun barrel seam while keeping it round. Watch the alignment of the gun barrel so the muzzle brake openings are at right angles to the barrel. There are aftermarket 17 pounder barrels out there if you want to replace it. The frame for the mantlet glues to the inside of the turret, then the mantlet glues to it from outside the turret. If you glue the shell ejection port open you should add a sprue "arm". DML has a separate but tiny periscope and cover - and brush guard - for the loader and commander. I used the plastic fixed vane sight and periscope guards. I left the hatches off til later.

[The molded on vented engine compartment screen is ill defined so I chose to use the photoetch part. You have to remove molded on grab handles in order for it to fit. You can also see some raised weld beads and highly defined tools.]

Step 5 has you remove some molded on parts, primarily grab handles and the axe bracket. I only did so where the p.e. forward engine hatch grill goes and used that p.e. part. With most of the assembly completed I re-painted and weathered the tank. I sprayed the smallest parts still on their sprue or fret - or removed them, cleaned them up and sprayed them attached to tooth picks or card stock and drybrushed as necessary. I sprayed the single length finely molded DS flexible tracks black and when dry, drybrushed them Humbrol deck tan. I glued them with everyday Tamiya liquid cement. When dry I inserted the drive wheel, slipped the track over the running gear and slid the drive wheel with track onto its axle making sure the teeth lined up with the track and the track sat properly on the wheels. If you have to, you can cement this track right to the wheels.

[The headlight, taillight, periscope and siren brush guards are scale appearance in plastic.]

[The periscope and siren brush guards are scale appearance in plastic.]

I finally added the finest small parts to the model. There was no way the smallest parts would have stayed on the model during drybrushing or handling. On the top rear of the hull are two unidentified "bottle" shaped parts that are actually fire extinguishers. Instead of just painting them red, I asked Military Modelling (U.K.) magazine's editor Ken Jones, what color they were because DML doesn't tell you and all the photos of British models or actual tanks I've seen were inconclusive. He said,

British fire extinguishers mounted on the exterior of AFVs and in the cabs of soft skins were usually painted the vehicle colour or left in their natural brass." The CTC (Carbon Tetrachloride) types made by the Pyrene Company had a brass body and brass pump handle. The later bottle-shaped types were also painted the vehicle's colour or green. I don't think anyone would like to fight a serious fire with these extinguishers and they were too toxic to use inside an AFV - CTC fumes being used to smother a fire. They were safe to use on electrical fires and engine fires but not in confined spaces. If you smoked a cigarette when using them they produced phosgene gas - that I remember from my RAF safety lectures (1960-1970s). Water gas extinguishers in barracks and camp sites and on fire points were painted red, and later foam extinguishers (such as in vehicle parks - motor pools) were painted cream.

I bet you didn't know that!!

Some tools are separate parts but the molded on ones are crisp, with an axe even having an optional photoetched mounting. For "color" I painted the wooden tool handles Humbrol deck tan and when dry I coated them with Tamiya acrylic clear orange which gives a cool "wood" look to them. I cut off the plastic positioning pins off the bottom of the shovel and a couple of other parts so I had some leeway positioning them. The travel lock for the barrel has position pins that line up with holes on the rear deck that are correctly off center.

This IS a great, modeler friendly kit with a small price tag when you consider it includes a photoetch fret! DML could give greater consideration as to what parts to provide on future frets, as some of these parts were, as Cookie says, too down "RP (right puny)." It's the best small scale Firefly you could buy just as the other new DML Shermans are the best there is. Thanks to Dragon Models USA for the review sample. You can get yours at better hobbyshops or www.dragonmodelsusa.com or call: (626) 968-0322. Now if they'd only release the entire U.S. M2-M3 series half tracks and many variants with their state of the art molding in 1/35 and 1/72nd, they'd make many a modeler mighty happy! And if they'd scale down their excellent figures and offer sets of 1/72nd scale U.S. and U.K. tank crews and infantry, it would be Braille scale bliss!

References: · "Sherman: A History of the American Medium Tank", by R.P. Hunnicutt.
· "D-Day Tank Warfare" Concord 7002, by S. Zaloga and G. Balin.
· "Sherman Tank 1941-1945" by Chris Ellis and Peter Chamberlain.
· "Walk Around M4 Sherman" by Jim Mesko.
· "Tanks of WWII" by Jean Restayn
· "British Tanks in Normandy" by Ludovic Fortin
· Military Modelling magazine vol 35 no. 7

Who Killed Michael Wittmann?

Everyone who builds armor models and is somewhat of an armor history buff has heard of at least one tank ace: Michael Wittmann. To too many he is practically a god, having destroyed an extraordinarily high score of his enemy (read: allies). Studies have been done of the aviation aces because like armor aces, only a small handful accounted for a vast majority of kills. Keen eyesight and an aggressive spirit were necessary in abundance. And being in command of a superior fighting machine went a long way.

No doubt, Wittmann and his crews had everything it takes to be a great "ace." Including a superior fighting machine. He had the advantage of watching enemy rounds bounce off his vehicle, while his rounds would slice through theirs like a hot knife through butter. His die hard devotees won't let that detract from his distinguished distinction! Nor will they accept that Wittmann became a Nazi party member in 1936 has any significance, or let anything less than legend account for his demise. There have been conflicting accounts of his death, begun no doubt by the Nazi propaganda machine, which involved either a Typhoon attack (research proved that no allied aircraft was in the vicinity that day), five Canadian or Polish Sherman's (none reported killing a Tiger there, that day) or Naval gunfire (ditto).

There have been NO conflicting reports by the British army, except that they claimed one less Tiger than was knocked out. Plain and simple, one Sherman Firefly hid in an orchard with three ordinary Shermans. Four Tiger tanks passed the orchard to attack Polish Shermans ahead of them. Wittmann and his comrades got lazy, or weren't thinking, having been spoiled by all the easy pickings they had enjoyed until that moment. His was the second of his formation to be hit, full aware of his mistake and that he faced an enemy of equal or superior fire power. Before he could maneuver he WAS taken out with 2 shots to his right rear flank; his Tiger brewed up and exploded with the loss of the entire crew. The British gunner, Trooper Ekins, then fired on and knocked out the third Tiger. Later in the day he took out a fourth Tiger. It would be eight years after the war before he was informed that one of his "kills" was Wittmann! The Germans knew all along. Some survived.

The U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail, reported the following story about Trooper Joe Ekins last year. As newspapers are want to do, it stretches it a bit as if this is the first revelation that Ekins was the man who got Wittmann. It has been known for quite some time but as far as I know, he was never treated as an armor god, never knighted, never celebrated a hero the likes of Wittmann himself! A link to the article is (no longer valid).

From the Daily Mail, 26 June 2006:
As a German war hero, he was in a deadly class of his own - having destroyed nearly 300 enemy tanks and guns. So astonishing were Michael Wittman's exploits that Hitler went to his wedding and he was feted throughout the Third Reich by the Nazi propaganda machine. So when the highly-decorated Waffen-SS tank ace met with his death in the Normandy countryside in August 1944, several Allied units claimed the distinction of having killed him.

[Trooper Ekin, wartime photo from Daily Mail article.]

But now, 62 years on, the man who really killed off the most successful tank commander of the Second World War has finally been revealed - Joe Ekins, a modest, retired shoe factory worker, now aged 82. Astonishingly, as a 21-year-old tank gunner, he had only ever fired five practice rounds before the encounter near St Aignan de Cramesnil on August 8, 1944. But in 12 minutes of superb shooting, the young trooper knocked out three heavily-armoured German Tiger tanks - including one containing the 30-year-old Nazi - with shells from his Sherman Firefly. Later that morning, he destroyed another German tank before his Firefly was hit and he and his crew had to run for safety.

After it was revealed that Wittman - who had destroyed 138 tanks, 132 anti-tank guns and other artillery pieces as well as hundreds of light vehicles - was dead, the kill was claimed by a number of Allied units, including Canadians, Poles and various airborne forces. But evidence now shows it was Mr Ekins' Firefly of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry that fired the fatal shot. And tomorrow he will relive that brief but highly significant battle when he is shown the world's only remaining working Tiger at the Bovington Tank Museum, near Bournemouth.

Following the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944, Joe Ekins and his comrades had been stuck in the bridgehead for six weeks as the British tried to batter their way through the German defensive lines.

Eventually we went out on a night march in a column - about four miles into German territory. We settled in an orchard near St Aignan de Cramesnil and in the morning the Germans counter-attacked. I could see at least three Tigers coming and we had three Shermans and one Firefly. The Firefly was an upgraded version of the normal Sherman fitted with a powerful 76mm gun - the only one that could penetrate the thick armour of a Tiger.

The squadron had two other Fireflies and I expected them to send one to help, but they decided not to and left me alone. We pulled out of the orchard and I fired twice at the third tank at the rear and it blew up. We reversed into the orchard so we could come out in a different place. But the second Tiger fired two or three rounds and hit our turret lid. The lid must have hit the commander's head and he jumped out, so our troop officer took over. We pulled out again and fired at the second Tiger and it exploded. We pulled back again and by this time, the third Tiger knew it had lost its two mates. I finished it off with two shells and had taken out all three in 12 minutes.

We later hit one more tank and then we were knocked out. There was a loud bang and sparks flew and we got out and ran like hell - the officer was hit by shrapnel.

When we got back, we were made into new tank crews and I was made wireless operator. It seemed a bit odd making your best gunner a wireless-operator. But it proved lucky, because over the next eight months we were one of the few crews who got through the lot.

I only found out eight years after the war that one of the people in the tank we hit was Wittman, but I'd never heard of him. He was very well known in Germany and there were lots of claims about who killed him, but it is well accepted now that we got him. He was an ace, but he wasn't too clever that morning. Usually it took five Shermans to beat one Tiger, but the Fireflies were better. When I heard about the concentration camps, I knew it was all worth it. I'm quite proud. Wittmann was a Nazi from the start - he must have known about the camps. It didn't matter who killed him, just that he was killed.

After the war, Mr Ekins married his sweetheart Gwen and had two children. They now also have two grandchildren. He went back to work in the shoe factories near his home in Rushden, Northamptonshire, and retired 34 years later after becoming a factory manager.

Tank museum curator David Willey said:

A lot of myths built up after the war. Some started to believe that Tiger tanks were so powerful that our tanks could never have destroyed them. And so the destruction of the Tigers was attributed to the air force, naval bombardment - anything but our tanks. But it is pretty much accepted now that Joe Ekins was the man who knocked out three Tiger tanks in one morning, including that of Michael Wittmann. We want to restore the balance between all that is written about Wittmann and his heroics and that which is written about Joe, a humble cobbler.

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