Cromwells 1/76 Austin-Putilov

 

The British firm of Austin designed a heavy but well-proven Armoured Car, with characteristic twin turrets, that were produced in three variants during the Great War. The first series (1915) is dinstinguished by having a very square-ish body, the second series (1916) by a slightly shorter chassis, a lower driver compartment and a slightly sloping rear, the third series (1917) by an extended rear with an almost bonnet-like configuration - a give-away for a peculiar feature of this series: it was equipped with a duplicate steering arrangement facing towards the rear.

Many of these Austins were supplied to Russia, where the Putilov works produced a special russian variant, distinguished by having the turrets in a special staggered configuration; actually an improvement to the original British design, were the turrets not so seldom restricted the field-of-fire of one another. Now the well-known firm of Cromwell has made a kit of this russian Austin.

The kit is made in that light-yellow resin that we know from this company, and comes in a simple plastic bag. The main parts are the hull, the two turret and the two wheel assemblies. There is also a number of smaller parts: MG:s, headlights, hatches etc - many are supplied with spares, which of course is welcome, as they are small and brittle.

Note also, that both the hull and the turrets comes with pretty hefty moulding plugs: nothing that can't be remedied by a couple of runs with your trust Dremel, though. As usual with Cromwell, the kit comes without any instructions. The mouldings are very good, the details are sharp - super rivets! - and the accuracy is very high.

As far as I can see there is only small problem - if we disregard some missing small towing hooks and handles, parts easily added by the modeller - and that is that there the "wings" to the MG:s has to be modified somewhat in shape. (The Russians almost invariably put armoured "wings" on both sides of their MG:s, in an attempt to protect the vulnerable cooling jackets from hostile fire.) All in all, an excellent little kit. It can be bought from Cromwell Models own site