The Little World

Or a German tank shell – because that seems to be what the French armoured corps were hoping for when they thought up their paint scheme and then added tricolour insignia at all the best aiming points.

I realise that they did not know what they were up against, nor what to do about it, but surely even the dullest of animals knows that you only show big feathers if you are a big bird. This tank is under-armoured, under-gunned, and largely devoid of a mission. It cannot outrun the enemy, cannot outshoot even infantry, and is painted up like a clay duck in a shooting gallery.

Nevertheless I love it, and will seek out as many of the other foolish Gallic decisions as I can find. Somewhere they must have got it right. Possibly on the Bastille Day parades in the 1960’s after all the gunfire had died down…

The fit if the kit was unexceptionable – Tamiya always reward the person who cleans a part correctly. The tracks were acceptable, but not a lot of fun. I gather that fun and tank tracks are mutually incompatible. At least one is not sanding a fuselage seam for a month…

I am also intrigued, as a new armour builder, at the amount of things tankers stow on the outer surfaces of their vehicles. This one has a jack, a pickaxe, a crowbar, a shovel, and a sledge hammer all strapped on in different places. There is a roll of wire cable. There are 5 hooks and eyes to tow it out of trouble. There is a spare idler wheel. All on a hull that seems originally designed to be as tiny as possible.

Would it not have been possible to make the hull a little bigger and keep the tools inside? What possible good are they if the enemy shoot them off?

The other thing that puzzles me is the lack of adequate armament on this thing. There is a tiny little short-barrelled gun that would probably not knock out anything harder than an ice-cream truck – and no machine gun at all. It is nothing but a death trap no matter what enemy troops are encountered. The French should have painted them grey with an iron cross on the side and left them as temptations for the panzer troops. Once they were captured they could be shelled properly.