Manufacturer: Coreé Productions, available from Squadron Mail Order, 1115 Crowley Drive, Carrollton, TX 75011-5010, 972-242-8663.
Kit: No. CE3509
Scale: 1/35
Price: $84.96
Comments: Mixed media, 358 parts (231 cast resin, 123 photoetched brass, 2 wires, 1 screen, 1 thread).
Pros: Excellent detail, excellent reference photos, very good parts fit, scales well.
Cons: No assembly instructions, large pour plugs, several poorly cast parts.

Like many of its Middle Eastern neighbors, Israel purchased hundreds of Centurion tanks from Great Britain. In the 1960s Israel began to update the Centurion, replacing the original Meteor engines with Continental diesels and replacing the 20-pound main gun with the French 105mm L7 gun. The engine replacement required a new rear deck for better engine cooling. Later, additional bolt-on armor would be added to the hull and turret to counter the increased firepower of the opposing forces.

This basically new tank was dubbed the Ben Gurion, in honor of Israel’s first Prime Minister/Defense Minister. The Ben Gurion has served the Israel Defense Force (IDF) well for many years. The industrial resources developed for the conversion paved the way for the indigenous Merkava tank family.

Coreé Productions of Korea has recently released a complete resin kit of the Ben Gurion. All of the major components are cast in light tan resin. The tracks are cast in long lengths of a “flexible” resin. The kit includes an extensive sheet of photoetched metal details. Brass wire and screen are provided to construct the turret basket. The hatches may be positioned in the open position, but no interior is provided for the hull; the turret is solid resin.

Alternate parts are provided for an early Ben Gurion without the thermal jacket on the main gun barrel. Add-on armor plates come separate, so you can easily build a tank that did not have them in place. Instructions consist of six pages of clear color photos, but there are no assembly instructions provided. No painting instructions or markings are provided – this kit is clearly aimed at experienced builders.

Before I began building the kit, I spent some time identifying the parts and planning my assembly strategy. A test of the “flexible” resin tracks revealed that they were not flexible enough to wrap around the drive sprocket and idler without the help of heat. Normally when I build armor I like to leave the tracks off until the main painting is done, but that wouldn’t work in this case. I decided to build, paint, and install the complete running gear before attaching the hull top. After removing excess resin from the two hull pieces, they fit well with only a little filler needed in the rear.

The bogie units had large pour plugs that were difficult to remove. The center bogie units differ from the outside ones, so don’t mix them up. Be sure to install the suspension arms (part Nos. 77 and 78) before you install the bogies, as they attach to the back of the parts and would be difficult to install later. The kit includes extra return rollers, but several were poorly cast. I used the best ones, but all except the rearmost ones are hidden by the sand shields.
With the rest of the suspension parts cleaned up, I painted all of the parts using Testor’s Acryl Israeli Desert Sand. The road wheels were painted Grimy Black. I sprayed the tracks with a dirty khaki color, add dry-brushed with Testor Steel.

The track sections simply butt together, and super glue held them well during installation. I placed the tank on three lengths of track and heated the forward section with a hair dryer. After they softened they wrapped easily around the drive sprockets. I repeated the process at the rear. I didn’t install the upper runs of track as the sand shields hid them, but they would have been easy to add.

With the lower hull complete, I added the upper hull piece, and filled the small gaps at the rear with epoxy putty. I then began adding all of the detail parts to the upper hull. While the assembly photos are excellent, I found myself constantly flipping through the pages looking at several photos before installing each piece.

If you are not adept at working with photoetched metal, you will be by the time you finish this kit. The headlight assemblies can be a challenge, but if you take your time they’ll turn out fine. I was surprised to find that the parts fit very well.

If you want the add-on armor, take care in installing part 60 that goes in front of the turret on the left. It could interfere with the turret. My gun barrel had a slight warp in the front section, but this was easily corrected by heating it with the hair dryer and straightening it out. The stowage-bin divider (E28) was too wide for the bin, no mater which way I tried to put it, so I cut it down to fit.

The most difficult assembly was building the turret basket. The brass wire frame and stiff metal screen required soldering, a skill I have yet to master. Super glue wouldn’t do here. A resin block helps you shape the frame, though. I had to fit and solder each piece of screen, then trim the excess with scissors. Fine brass wire grab handles were soldered (not again!) to the side shields. Finally I assembled the turret machine guns. I had a little problem position their photoetched bases (E51) until I realized that the parts were over-etched and missing the rear third of the part. These guns were left off until final assembly.

I spent almost 50 hours building my Ben Gurion, quite a bit more than I spend building an injection molded kit. About half of the time was spent cleaning up parts, and double-checking where they went on the vehicle. While it took longer, I found the process enjoyable (except for that darned turret basket). An Israeli publication called Born in Battle, War Data No. 1, The Centurion, was my main reference. The finished model scales almost to the inch to the data in that book.

I highly recommend Coreé’s Ben Gurion to any experienced modeler who has an interest in Israeli armor.