Kit: No. 72801
Scale: 1/72
Manufacturer: Mirage Hobby, available from Squadron Mail Order, 1115 Crowley Drive, Carrollton, TX 75011-5010, 979-242-8663,
www.squadron.com
Price: $16.98
Comments: Injection-molded, 136 parts (9 photoetched brass, 3 rubber), decals
Pros: Good parts fit, little flash, as much detail as a 1/35 scale kit
Cons: Parts misidentified in instructions, some already tiny components assembled from multiple teeny-tiny parts
The M3 Lee was a weapon born of panicked reaction to reports about tank warfare in Europe and North Africa. In 1941, no available U.S. Army tank could accommodate a turret large enough for a gun that would be effective against German battle tanks. As a compromise, an M2 75mm gun was placed in a limited-traverse mounting on the right side of an M2A1 medium tank hull to form the M3. M3s served in North Africa and the Pacific, and the British used a version dubbed the Grant. Mirage has also issued a Grant kit, the only difference being the decals and a sprue for the Grant’s different 37mm gun turret.
Molded in varying shades of light-gray, largely flash-free plastic, this kit offers all the detail you’d expect to find in a 1/35 scale kit. This means many of the parts are tiny – hard to handle and easy to lose (I spent my share of time on the floor looking for lost parts). Despite the small parts, the overall fit is remarkably good. A contributing factor is cleaning up the sprue attachment points and small bits of flash without damaging the part. Use a light touch with the sanding sticks. Awkwardly located attachment points on the hull top made cleanup difficult, and the headlight locating holes on the fenders seem too close to the hull.
Most hull and running-gear details are molded separately, which works well for modelers who want to model different vehicles from the six choices offered in the kit. Even with the generally good fit, coaxing the cupola’s seven minuscule pieces to fit together neatly is a challenging, fiddly process. I regret not owning a set of magnifying goggles! The separately molded ring that helps connect the cupola to the turret roof flipped off my workbench and disappeared in the carpet for several days, only to resurface just before final assembly.
The instructions are well-illustrated, but take the part number designations on them with a grain of salt. The parts on sprue N were misidentified as being on sprue K, and some part callouts are missing from the instructions. For placement, I relied mostly on visual identification and the line drawings in Squadron/Signal’s M3 Lee/Grant in Action. Also, the instructions offer you the option of engine exhausts with rounded or squared-off shields, but the square ones don’t seem to be correct for any of the prototypes represented in the kit (probably meant for the Grant version). I used the rounded ones instead.
The small fret of photoetched-brass parts is an unexpected nicety. The instructions indicate that the photoetched engine compartment screen can be placed directly on the hull without removing the molded-in screen detail, but don’t buy it. I did, and the screen ended up with a lumpy, grafted-on look. Shaping and attaching the tiny photoetched headlight guards may give you a case of the fidgets, but they look great and are well worth the effort.
The rubber tracks look surprisingly realistic in this scale; they took paint well (Tamiya spray-can lacquer) and fit perfectly without the a tell-tale lump or gap where the ends meet. The decals were thin and trouble-free. Regular setting solution seemed a little harsh, so I anchored them with a bit of Future.
I put about 25 hours into my M3, partly due to my inexperience with this scale. I don’t recommend it as a beginner kit, but if you have the patience, good eyesight, and fine motor skills for it, you can build it straight from the box into a remarkably detailed replica of the funniest looking tank in U.S. service. I can see myself tackling another – but not before I get that magnifying device!
– Lawrence Hansen