Marine Armour At Last

   Yesterday I finished up the first six USMC armoured vehicles for FLames of War Pacific. THese include four LVT(4) Amtracs and two M3 Stuart tanks.

   I had problems with the Amtracs, in that all of them have some pretty noticeable issues with the tracks. This is a casting issue I think, since it's on all four models. Two of the models were sent to me as replacements for the damaged original pair that I bought. The replacements had the same issues as the originals. If I were going to buy more, I might consider the British version, the LVT-4 Water Buffalo. It has metal tracks and a resin hull. It also has a British crew, so you would need to get some gunners in American kit. As it is, I think I will just stick with the four I have (all I need for two platoons, anyway). 

   Each has a name, but I didn't have any numerical decals appropriate for them so they are not numbered. I may get around to doing that one of these days... yeah, right. Anyway, they are "Betty," "Conan,", "Purple Heart Kids," and "Deuces Wild." You can see Betty's name on her armoured fender, just forward of the red beach stripe. I essentially painted them like the ones that Battlefront did, but with flat green instead of the grey base they used. I kind of wish I had used a different color for the beach stripes, too. I might go back and change that, if I ever get proper numerals on there.

   I did use the British version of the M3 Stuart, known in British service by the nickname "Honey."  It's a little different from the Marine version, but I already had a box of them that I wasn't using, so... they got drafted. Hey, Uncle Sam's Misguided Children would steal gear from anyone they could. Maybe these were supposed to have been in Aussie hands and 'somehow' ended up with a Marine division.

   The M3 is generally classed a light tank, but "light" is sort of a relative term. In the Pacific, the M3 was as heavily armoured as almost any Japanese tank, and its 37mm gun was capable against them all. It also had the canister round, which I am looking forward to deploying against Japanese banzai charges. Mine here are named "Diablo" and "Alley Oop."

   None of the vehicles have registration numbers. It seems, according to the fifteen minutes of internet reserach that I did, that it was uncommon for Marine vehicles to get registration numbers in combat areas. This was primarily due to a lack of supplies, and no one wanted to waste any of their precious (and probably looted from inattentive Army or Navy supply unit) paint on numbers.