[rockpaperscissor]

This is CT Ertz's excellent design, enlarged to 1/50 scale and texturized by me using Photoshop.

History: In the very last days of WWI, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was disintegrating, and Poland was working to establish its Eastern border. The contested city of Lwow (Lviv) became a flashpoint between the Ukrainians and the Poles. In an effort to gain an advantage, Poland's first armored vehicle was designed, ordered, and then constructed in a mere three days. It was dubbed Pilsudski's tank after the great Polish hero Marshall Jozef Pilsudski, and aside from a half dozen period photos, there is very little information on the vehicle. From a Polish website, I learned that it was probably built using a civilian Praga V 5-ton truck chassis as a starting point. It had a crew of seven, and was armed with 4 machine guns of uncertain manufacture. A chain mail curtain was installed all around the perimeter. If the bare sheet steel of the hull was painted at all, the color is unknown. A relief sculpture of a Polish eagle was mounted to the front of the vehicle, on what appears to be a painted rectangle, probably red. The "tank" saw action twice in the streets of Lwow: on November 9 offensively against Ukrainian forces, and again on November 22-24 during the Ukrainian withdrawal, to quell subsequent riots.

Kit mods: To make my model more closely resemble the old photos, I removed the right side door, and reduced the size of left side door. I also added an extra armor plate to the left side, and changed the shape of the front vision ports. I reduced the span of the axles, and detailed the underside with a quickly drawn 2D chassis. The wheels have too many spokes for a Praga V, but they can barely be seen anyway, especially after the model is mounted on its base. The eagle on the front isn't exactly like the one in the photos, but I just couldn't find an image that matched. I "painted" it olive drab overall, but it might have been more interesting to leave it grungy bare metal like the recently constructed full scale replica.

The build: to avoid sagging paper, I reinforced the interior of the hull with corrugated cardboard. For a better appearance, I used internal glue strips to join the two roof parts rather than overlapping the paper. I didn't close up the model until all the exterior details were added (except for the machine guns which were mounted at the very end). The wheel halves were laminated to beer coasters, glued together, and then wrapped with the tread strip. The chain skirt (which could be a bit longer), was edged glued all around. Everything fit perfectly. CT did a great job on this kit. I chose to leave off a spotlight which is indistinct in the photos, and an American flag which was sometimes/somehow mounted on the roof.

The photos aren't the best, 'cuz it's dark (will it ever stop raining?), but at least there's a lot of them, LOL.