That's right all ye landlubbers.......like Britannia, Amtracs rule the waves. Your tank may be able to fight well on dry ground, but can it float worth a darn?

After almost 3 years, my LVT(A)-1 finally got a paint job. I built this model during the winter of 2008/2009 and it was first posted on this forum near the end of February, 2009. Actually, I didn't originally post it myself, forum member "kclank" posted photos of it and got me started on this forum. I thank him and all of the forum members for making my participation in this hobby a lot of fun and inspiration.

Sooooo, this model has been sitting on the shelf since then begging for paint. At first I was going to paint it an incredibly exciting shade of Navy gray. However, I always liked the paint scheme on the Amtracs the Marines used on Iwo Jima, and finally got in the mood to do that camo scheme. I don't know if any of this version of Amtracs were deployed on Iwo Jima, but I'm going to claim that it survived a previous island battle campaign and was reassigned to the 5th Marines for Iwo Jima, and got repainted.

I made the parts to kinda/sorta convert the (A)-1 into an LVT(A)-4 using the turret from my M8 Stuart, but the turret is the wrong color, has grousers on it, and sits too high, so I will have to make another turret. Another possible (but unlikely) conversion is an LVT(A)1/M24, if I steal the turret off of my Chaffee (or make another turret) and make a lot more conversion parts. That was a one shot experiment and many changes were made before the project got canceled at the end of the war.

The model floats properly (when ballasted correctly) and runs in water pretty good, it uses standard HL Panzer III tracks. I am thinking about making the tracks that have the W shape cupped tread, but that would be a pain.....I would need to make about 130 of those. That tread design would make it run faster in the water, but I don't think it would last long running in the dirt (see pic). A simple T shape would be an alternate track modification, but not a great solution either (see other pic). Building the track on my Char B1 bis kinda pooped me out on custom track building. The turret operates and a friend of mine built a sump pump for it so that it won't sink if it takes on water. I'm going to build a 4'x8' water tub in the yard and finally make a video of it running, along with my USMC DUKW.

I'll post some more photos later.


Semper Fi and Anchors Aweigh!

Rex