T-55 Platoon

Next up is a T-55 Platoon.

Obviously this is made up of 3 T-55s.  As the Britannia ones were so yucky, and I had previously built a Trumpeter kit and found it to be very straight forward and you end up with a lovely tank - I decided to go down the Trumpeter route.  I also decided to find some Easy Model T-55s which are basically diecast versions of the Trumpeter kits.  The plan was to get a couple of pre-builts and one kit which would be used as the Platoon Commander's vehicle.

I ended up picking up these two Easy Model kits quite cheaply on ebay:

These would obviously need to be repainted...

So then I built the kit - which I then realised that I had already known that the Trumpeter kits don't come with any open hatches...  Bugger!  That ruined that plan...

So my remaining option was to only repaint one of the T-55s and leave the other as the "different" looking tank - to mark it out as the Platoon leader's vehicle.  As the prime reason for doing this was for use as Soviet Naval Infantry, attacking Norway, I decided to leave the "snowy" tank as is and repaint the one with the big cross on the turret.

I did of course jazz up the "snowy" tank to try and help make it look more like the others:

Comparing the tanks of the left and right hand sides I can't tell (from simply looking at them) which is the diecast and which is the kit.  You can when you pick them up though...

While I was doing the weathering I decided to re-weather my T-55 with mine-roller tank so it looks similar:

So that, along with the PT-76's, is the start of my armour for my Soviet Naval Infantry.  Next up will be their troop transports.

Thanks

Richard