Problems with Rivets - More on the Airfix WW1 tank
by David Maynard

I bought my first Airfix WW1 tank soon after it first appeared in 1967, and still rate it as one of my favourite small-scale tanks. My liking for it may have stemmed from the fact it doesn't have the large number of road wheels found on later tanks - speedy building is a plus when you are young! As I built more Airfix models the company's quirks became more apparent; the fact that some models were hybrids with features from several different marks, and the actions of the famous Airfix 'rivet king' (well known to aircraft modellers). Both of these quirks affect the WW1 tank, although the first of them is easier to spot than the second.

As both Graham Matthews and Hans van Oerles have noted on their websites, the Airfix WW1 tank is mostly a Mark II fitted with the tail wheels of the Mark I tank. Where the hatch on the driver's cab came from is not so certain; it is too small to be the Mark Vs and is more like the one found on captured Mark IVs. If that was all, it would be fairly simple to produce a Mark I and very easy to make Mark II. Unfortunately there is a third element involved in the hybrid which makes it difficult to do either entirely accurately.

The problem
A close look at the sides of the track frames shows the problem - there are too many rivets along the major vertical joints between panels. Unusual for Braille-scale models, I know, but the spacing is far closer than on the original tank. The spacing is about 2/3 of what it should be, based on rivet-counts along the major joints. Rivet spacing on the roof is noticeably wider, possibly a bit too wide. Comparison with the Emhar Mark IV shows a real difference, even allowing for the slightly larger scale.

An explanation?
How it happened is hard to say, I suspect the Airfix designers looked at archive photographs as well as the Bovington Mark II when they were drawing up their plans. From the model it seems some of the photographs were actually of the prototype tank 'HMLS Centipede' aka 'Mother'. This would appear to make sense, as some of the photographs of 'Mother' are very clear (if retouched) and would have made a better basis for plans than the pictures of Mark Is in France. What Airfix's designers seem to have overlooked is that 'Mother' was built differently to the production tanks. The prototype was built out of boilerplate fastened with rivets spaced at boilermaker's pitch (closely spaced), while the production tanks were riveted using the wider spaced girdermaker's pitch. As a result of following photographs of the prototype the finished model ended up with too many rivets. (In his new book 'The Devil's Chariots', John Glanfield suggests from documentary evidence that tanks built by Fosters retained boilermaker's pitch up to the Mark IV. Photographic evidence shows this is unlikely as there are clear views of Fosters-built males 742 and 743 (one actually being loaded on a train at the factory) showing the rivets are pitched at the same wide spacing as Metro-built tanks. Even contemporary evidence needs to be cross-checked!)

The problem remains
We are left with the matter of disguising or removing the excess rivets on the model. Removing alternate rivets is a bit extreme (and still won't be entirely accurate), so I think my next tank will be very weary Mark II at Arras, sporting camouflaged Mark I sponsons and relying on mud to hide the problems.