Modelik St Chamond

[CharlieC]

Finally - after 91 days on the high seas my copy of Modelik's St Chamond tank turned up today.

You're not going to escape the history....

The St Chamond was the second French tank of WW1 (the Schneider CA1 was the first). It was built to roughly the same specification as the Schneider and used similar design ideas. The suspension was an adaptation of the Holt tractor suspension with a box-like armoured body on top of the suspension. The St Chamond was armed with a 75mm gun - a much bigger gun than all other tanks of the period. It wasn't successful in action because it was slow and the long overhang of the nose limited its trench crossing ability. Many of the problems with early tanks were due to a lack of understanding of how to use them. It wasn't until the offensives of 1918 that the "all arms" doctrine of General Monash finally allowed armour to become truely effective. Some 400 St Chamond tanks were built and a few were used after WW1 by Spain and Russia.

There is a working St Chamond tank preserved at Saumur and the model seems to be fairly closely based on this although the camouflage colours are different.
The Modelik model acknowledges the AJ Press book on the Schneider CA1 and St Chamond - I'd certainly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in these vehicles. There are lots of walkarounds of the St Chamond on the Web - a pretty good one is at AMMS Brisbane in the "Reference" section. [Disclaimer - I look after this site so I might be biased].

The Modelik model is printed in A3 format although I'm not sure why - there aren't any parts bigger than an A4 page - I guess it's a production cost choice.

The booklet contains:
1 page of white model (prototype) photos.
1 page of text - description and instructions in Polish
3 pages of construction diagrams with some build photos
2 pages of frames on 80 gsm - this is to be laminated onto 1mm card.
5 pages of parts on 180/200 gsm card

The model represents a late model St Chamond with 4 colour camouflage. The colour drawings of this vehicle in the AJ Press show the colours as Horizon Blue, Green, Brown and Ochre. The printed model seems to have a charcoal colour instead of Horizon Blue. This can be fixed on scans of the model, unfortunately the tank's suspension was also painted Horizon Blue so it would be a lot of work to correct the colours. Interestingly the sample page shown on Modelik's site shows the correct blue colour so they may have a quality control issue.

The detail of the suspension and the exterior of the tank look to be very good and faithfully model the original. There is no interior modeling but I'm not sure this would add a great deal to this model.

I splashed out and bought Modelik's lasercut frames and tracks - the frames look very good but I'll suspend judgement on the tracks until I build the model.

Regards,

Charlie

(The images are lifted from Modelik's site - my camera has gone walkabout)

[Amazyah]

Ohh weeee!
I can't wait!
Sounds like my kind of model. I love the little details!

Where are the build pics? I wanna see!

Russell

[redhorse]

Nice review, and I really liked the pics on the AMMS Brisbane site. I'm curious about what the barrel is for in the interior, any ideas?

[CharlieC]

Originally Posted by redhorse

Nice review, and I really liked the pics on the AMMS Brisbane site. I'm curious about what the barrel is for in the interior, any ideas?

That's what I call attention to detail - well spotted. It only looks like a barrel - it's actually a wooden roller. There are 2 small ones at the front and a larger single roller at the rear. The idea was to support the tank so it didn't dig the nose or tail in if it got stuck crossing a trench. It didn't work since the ground was usually so soft the roller just sank into the soil. The Schneider and Renault FT-17 had skids protruding out the back (the "tail") for the same purpose.

Regards,

Charlie

[Don Boose]

Another great review, Charlie. Many thanks for the historical information. I am passing on this review and the info on the AMMS site to some of my Army War College and Military History Institute colleagues. I really appreciate the well-informed historical information you provide -- not to mention the great model building advice and photos.

Don

[CharlieC]

Thanks Don, the images on the AMMS site were taken by Dave Scorer, a great modeler and an enthusiast for WW1 vehicles. His scratchbuilt models often take out awards in competitions.

I'm working my way (slowly) through his images taken at Saumur and Bovington last year. I'm impressed by his "eye" for the details a modeler might need.

I guess we (at AMMS) should try and get a definitive walkaround of "Mephisto" - it's currently housed in a glassed in enclosure so it's difficult to get good images.

Regards,

Charlie