EMHAR:s 1/72 Mk A "Whippet"
Review by James H Reeve, Gary Zimmer, Thomas Sime and Peter Kempf

The long wait for this kit has been well worth it. The overall dimensions are spot on and the rivet detail isn’t as heavy as on the Mk IV. There is some nice attention to detail, for example the slight difference in width between the front and rear plates on the hull top and the fact that the angle iron on top of the fighting compartment doesn’t extend all the way across to the starboard side. The relative positions of the armour plates are well reproduced. 

Although it seems to be a scaled-down version of the 1/35 kit, there are far fewer parts, principally because there is no complex track assembly and the hull base, front, and sides are moulded in one piece, making assembly quick and straightforward, except that some of the edges are a little rounded and need filing and sanding to get a neat butt fit.  

There are only a few minor problems, but a couple of them are surprising.

There is no vision slit above the Hotchkiss mount on the port side of the fighting compartment, a mistake that has also been made on the 1/35. Instead there are two rivets which mark where it ought to be, so a horizontal slot needs to be drilled out, as shown in the drawing:

 

And there isn't a vision slit for the driver, either.

With a little sanding, the two-piece track assemblies fit nicely together, but they fix tight against the locating ridges on the hull sides, whereas in reality there was obviously some clearance. The 1/35 gets it right in that respect. I suggest the solution is to remove enough of the top upper ridges to show that bit of clearance.

 

The biggest problem seems to be the Hotchkiss guns. They’re completely different from the 1/35 version, and, unless I’m doing something wrong, it hasn’t worked at all. The larger scale gun is on a simple ball mounting but in 1/72 Emhar have come up with this:

The hemispherical mountings didn’t fit through the holes in the compartment sides, and if you drill the holes out to fit they go straight through and project too far. The shape won’t allow them to swivel, even if you wanted them to, but in any case the instructions advise cementing them in place, so there doesn’t seem to be any point. The exception is the forward gun for which a housing is supplied to allow it to swivel; I haven’t attempted that yet, but in this scale I don’t see the point. The Hotchkisses are a bit chunky compared to, say, that on the Matchbox FT-17, so it might be better to scratch-build the whole thing. I’m happy to be corrected if anyone else has had more luck.

There is some confusion about drawings of the Whippet. Unfortunately, whilst those in the assembly instructions are faithful, those for the colour schemes are not. They show the wrong fighting compartment shape on the starboard side, with a flat roof above the driver instead of the sloping plate. This leads Emhar to advise putting decals somewhere that doesn’t exist. They do show the missing vision slit on the port side, but in the wrong place, unless all gunners on that side were left-handed . . .

Somehow a highly inaccurate drawing has got into the system, and it is at odds with all the photographs I have seen. If you are thinking of using the Profile Publication on the Whippet as a guide, don’t take any notice of the colour drawing - unless this is a little-known variant, it’s even worse. It has the same mistake about the driver’s roof, shows the engine hatches situated symmetrically, which they aren’t, and, astonishingly, shows the rear Hotchkiss mounted not in the door but in the panel next to the door.

And there was an article on building the 1/35 Whippet in Military Modelling which should be avoided at all costs. It contains detailed instructions on how to move the rear Hotchkiss from the door to the adjoining panel, which is, of course, completely unnecessary. I spoke to the author of the article, who confessed that it was a terrible mistake based on the well-known photo of the Whippet with the rear door open 180°, creating the optical illusion that the ball-mount was in a different place.

Anyway, the new Whippet seems to be a very good kit, bearing in mind that my research is much more extensive than my modelling experience. Probably 4½H. Feel free to argue.

                                                                                      - James H Reeve

For photos, plans and info on the real thing, click here! Matador now sells a very fine detailing set for this kit, aiming at correcting most of these small errors in a snap.

More Comments 
by Gary Zimmer

I just got my hands on Emhar's 1/72 Whippet. The kit is 22 parts, four parts for the track units, four guns, four parts for the exhausts, and the rest are hull parts. The first thing noticable is the detail on the sides of parts. Often many kits have rivet detail on the top of a part, and none on the side due to the need to extract it from a 2 part mould. Emhar's Whippet lower hull is a open top box, with detail on all five faces, meaning a multi-part mould was used. This moulding technique is what you see on recent Roco kits for example, but here it must be a big advance for a small maker like Emhar. The track unit outers must have been molded this way too, because there is cleat and rivet detail all around, plus the side plate detail.

You can bang one of these together in 20 minutes, it's almost a snap-tite. Fit of parts is very good, the only bit of tweaking required was the Part 8 (the engine deck) and part 7 (cab roof/sides) are moulded together, you need to cut them apart and fit them separately. The front machine gun is different to the other 3, this front one is retained by a collar from inside, the others just press in to the holes in the hull pieces. If you want them to move a bit, you need to countersink these holes slightly from the inside. None of the crew hatches or engine hatches are separate.

Like Emhar's A7V, the paint guide quotes FS (Federal Standard) numbers, which is a pain if you don't have an FS guide. I notice that the FS numbers are the same for the A7V. The back of the box shows a German Beutepanzer in a 3 color scheme, but for every other choice of markings its just plain FS.16118 overall, whatever FS.16118 happens to be.

The decals look fantastic, and they are in register too. There are white-red-white stripes for the nose, the front of the track horns, and a huge one for the engine deck. Emhar's previous MkIVs had 4 decal options each, the A7V had five, but the Whippet has EIGHT. There are 5 British schemes: A347 Firefly, which is on the box art; A259 Caesar II (ironic since this was WW1 and the correct pronunciation of Caesar is "Kaiser"); A378 Golikell; A230 Gofasta; A351 Fanny Adams; German captured (just 2 crosses); Japanese tank 201; and a Russian tank A371 with the name "Sphinx" in Cyrillic.

If you don't want to use the supplied decals, there are a few more Whippets that you could make. "Musical Box" was a famous tank that had a very colourful career but rather plain markings. Julian's Baby is another relatively well known Whippet. The German Freikorps also had a Whippet in 1919, this was marked with "53" on the front firewall and skull-and-crossbones front, rear, and both sides.

Good stuff, Emhar. Please keep the WW1 tanks coming.

Additional Comments 
by Peter Kempf

Of all EMHAR:s 1/72 scale WW1 Tank kits, this is the one with the smallest number of parts, which is no surprise when you see how they decided to do the kit. Much of the hull comes as two parts - a good thing as you won't have to join a lot of small plates at difficult angles, at best only losing all the rivet detail. Also, the track doesn't come as a separate parts, but is moulded integral with the track assembly side parts. 

Purist will maybe mind, as it makes it difficult to do the tank without tracks - I can't see the harm, as the upside is that we get very got, scale thick tracks, and we don't have to battle with either individual track links, or rubber-band tracks. This is an easy build! That I like: you can concentrate on the details and the finish instead of just losing it over getting the whole thing together. (RPM please note!)

In addition to the left-out visions slits, there is another small problem. On the front and rear of the hull, overhanging the tracks, are four protruding "rods" - for want of a better word - two at the front and two at the rear. On the real Whippet, these were used as fastening points for the mud guards (if you are to judge by photographs, the mud guards themselves were often removed, or fell off in action). The front fastening rods in the kit can be used as is, but are too long and to heavy, and need to be trimmed down in both aspects. The rear fastening rods are wrong: in reality they were attached on top of the hull, and was not integral to it, as in the kit. They are best cut off, and simply replaced with some plastic strip, preferrebly of the angled variety. Notice also that the curved part on which they are attached, are much too heavy, and need to be trimmed down. (For more details, check the walk-around photos on this page.)

Regarding the Machine Guns: notice that the Whippet (as other British Tanks equipped with this French gun) used the smaller, portable version of the Hotchkiss, not the standard Mle1914 Heavy MG - that equipped the FT17. (Click here to see more details on the portable Hotchkiss, used in British Tanks.) The guns that come with the kit aren't dead ringers for the actual thing, and has to be modified a bit. See on the small photos below, and I think you will get the idea:

The decal sheet is good. You get markings for no less than eight tanks! Five British, one German Beute, one Japanese, and one White Russian. The British are Firefly, Caesar II, Golikell, Gofasta and Fanny Adams - the last three were all from the same unit: 17th Batallion, Tanks Corps, based in Dublin in June 1919. (There is certainly room for after-market decals: more British, like the famous Musical Box or Julians Baby, more from the Russian Civil War, both for White and Red Whippets.) One problem with the decals, though, is the fact that the white-red-white nationality markings that are to go on the outer side of the track horns, also should go over the square holes for the track tensioning screws, which will be tricky to do. We'll see about that. Also, I think there is one error regarding the markings of the White Army Whippet, the A371 Sphinx: in the kit, you are instructed to give it standard British Army Nationality stripes on the sides of the track covers. The new Osprey book however, shows Sphinx with a special type of thin red-white-red stripes on the tank front only. Also, if you want to do Sphinx, it really should have the wooden boxes that were fitted on many Whippets and that can be seen on photos of Sphinx. These are easily built in plastic card. On the picture below you can see them, together with some other small additions I've made: 1. a pistol port on the cab roof, 2. handles from copper wire, 3. modified MG:s, 4. thinned down mudgard fastening rods, 5. thinned down rear plate, and 6. added rails for hanging up track spuds:

What can one gripe about? We'll it is a basic kit, without any frills. This is not wrong: you will get a perfectly good Whippet by just building the kit straight out of the box (but minding the MG:s, the visions slits and the track assemblies). This of course leaves room for super-detailing, adding things like track grousers, stowage boxes, new handles, opening up the top hatch and/or the entry door. But this is what we modellers really love to do! So I can't say that this is bad, really. And below you can see the completed model (for more views of this model, click here!):

So I agree with James: this is an excellent good kit, with only some small, easily rectified problems. Matador now sells a very fine detailing set for this kit, aiming at correcting most of these small errors in a snap.

For a helpful french review of this kit, click here!

Even more additional Comments 
by Tom Sime

In addition to the work recommended by the Landships articles, I replaced the plumbing going in and out of the exhaust muffler. I also added thin strips of plastic along the tops of the five “L” shaped brackets which on the Whippet retained the axle mounts for the “road wheels/lower return rollers(?)” I did this as I thought that the ones moulded to the kit look a little under scale. Under the “tension adjusters”(?) for the drive sprocket I added a sixth angel iron, which for some strange reason Emhar missed. Before gluing the running gear parts together I added four pairs of return roller wheels to each side, these are the “dumbbells “ that can be seen in the two bottom shots and are a “must” if you intend to display the vehicle at an acute angle.