WayneMac 1/32 USMC M1917 Six Ton Light Tank

[Don Boose]

This is the second of my interwar U.S. Army vehicle builds, beginning with the M1918 Ford Three Ton Special tractor model, the build report of which, I posted earlier. Kampfflieger 1/32 U.S. Army M1918 Ford Three Ton Special Tractor

U.S. Army forces fought in World War I with French-built Renault FT light tanks (two battalions of the 304th Tank Brigade) and British-built Mk. V heavy tanks of the 301st Tank Battalion. The M1918 Three Ton Special Tractor was the first operational U.S.-manufactured tank to arrive in France in 1918, although only 15 of them made it to the Langres Light Tank Center, and they were never used in combat.

The Six Ton M1917 light tank was a U.S.-manufactured version of the French Renault FT. It differed from the FT in having a four-cylinder 42-horsepower Buda HU engine in place of the Renault engine (the external muffler on the port side of the M1917 is the most obvious visual difference from the FT, which has the muffler on the starboard side). The M1917 also had a fire screen bulkhead installed between the two-man crew and the engine, various modifications to the armor and vision slits, different style and placing of rivets, and some modifications to the suspension including replacement of the FT's wooden front idler wheels with steel wheels. All the M1917s had an octagonal flat-plate turret and were armed with either an M1916 37mm cannon or a .30-caliber machine gun. Early models of the M1917 mounted Marlin machine guns, but these were soon replaced with M1919 tank machine guns with barrel-cooling shrouds and external mantlets.

The first M1917 Six Ton tanks arrived at the Langres tank center in France on 20 November 1918, nine days after the Armistice ended the fighting. Some 952 M1917s were built (526 armed with machine guns, 372 armed with 37mm cannons, and 50 radio-equipped command tanks). From 1919 until the mid-30s, the M1917 was (except for a handful of experimental vehicles) the only light tank in the U.S. Army, while the standard heavy tank of the time was the Mk. VIII International (or Liberty) tank. Image 1 shows a detachment of typical M1917 Six Tonners in U.S. Army service. Shown are two machine gun tanks and one cannon tank of the 1st Battalion, 66th Infantry Regiment (Light Tanks), at Fort Meade, Maryland, in the early 1930s. Note that these tanks are equipped with radios and have antennas projecting from the cupolas.

Wayne McCullough has designed a nifty model of the Renault FT light tank available in 1/72 and 1/50 scale through CharlieC's Landships II site. He also offers the visually similar M1917 Six Ton light tank in the markings of the 1927 U.S. Marine Expeditionary Force in China (the subject of this build) and the MK. VIII. To obtain these models, go to Landships II, click on "Models," and then click on "Wayne McCullough."

References:
George Bradford, AFV Plans: 1914-1938, Armored Fighting Vehicles, Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2010, p. 31.
R.P. Hunnicutt, Stuart: A History of the American Light Tank, Volume 1, Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1992, pp. 17-39.
Ralph E. Jones, George H. Rarey, Robert J. Ickes, Fighting Tanks Since 1916, Landisville, PA: Coachwhip Publications, 2012 (reprint of original 1933 edition), pp. 157-158.
Witold J. Ławrynowicz, French Light Tank Renault FT & U.S. Six-Ton Tank M1917, Warsaw: Model Centrum PROGRESS, 2006. (Excellent close-up images of every part of the tanks.)
Steve Zaloga, Early US Armor: Tanks 1916-40, New Vanguard 254, Oxford, UK: Osprey Publications, 2017.
"M1917 Light Tank," OnLine Tank Museum, available at Light Tank M1917 - Tank Encyclopedia (Good quality images.)
"Six-ton Tank M1917," American Fighting Vehicle Data Base, available at 6-ton Tank M1917 (50megs.com) and 6-ton Tank M1917 (Good walk around with close up images.)

USMC Six-Ton tanks: In 1927, political violence in China led President Calvin Coolidge to order the deployment of U.S. military forces to China to protect American interests. The Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet sent an initial expeditionary battalion of Marines. In March 1927, the 3rd Marine Brigade, consisting of the 4th Marine Regiment and supporting elements and commanded by Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler, was activated at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. Six U.S. Army M1917 light tanks were transferred to the Marine Corps and assigned to the 3rd Brigade. Based on the photographic evidence, half were armed with 37mm cannon and half were armed with machine guns. My model is meant to represent one of those tanks. The brigade was sent to Shanghai in March 1927. Information and images of the Marine tanks from the U.S. Army Armor and Cavalry Collection are available at the Online Tank Museum site (Light Tank M1917 - Tank Encyclopedia). Mitch Williamson wrote a good concise summary of the 1927 Marine Deployment in "Marines in China 1927-1929," available at https://archive.is/20120728231314/wa...china-1927-29/.

Images 2, 3, and 4 show the USMC M1917 Six Tonners in China.

Images 5 and 6 are of my model. I will provide images of the build in my next post.

More later,

Don

[gotham]

Lovely, clean build 😊😊😊

[birder]

Very nice work on early little armor…

[smithdr]

Wow...that did turn out great. Nice to see it in a bigger format and not on my"zoom" screen!


Nice one, Don...Dan

[Michael Mash]

Hello Don:
You packed a lot of good reading and excellent photos into your introduction.
This is good subject matter. I love the vintage armor, and your research and model building about this topic fills a big gap here.
The photos show your fine work with the model and the display. Looking forward to the construction images.
Mike

[Don Boose]

I hesitate to post this build in light of SinDiPaper’s magnificent Renault FT build at Gpm tk-3

There is no comparison, but as an unskillful (if loquacious) builder of simple models, I humbly offer my build of a VERY much simpler model of a similar tank.

The Model:

My model is an enlargement to 1/32 scale of Wayne McCullough’s 1/72 model, which is also available in 1/50 at LandshipsII: Landships II

Landships also provides more information about the M1917 and a compilation of film clips of the tank in action. A lot of this footage appears to be of light tank units on maneuvers at Fort Meade, Maryland, in the 1920s and early 30s (1st Tank Regiment, re-designated 66th Infantry Regiment [Light Tanks] in 1932). It also includes footage of an M1917 climbing up Pikes Peak, Colorado, as part of an April 1919 Victory Bond drive, as well as stills of various museum tanks. Landships II

Several years ago (2011-2013), Wayne began designing a series of World War I-era tanks, aircraft, and artillery. I started to build the U.S. Army versions while conducting archival research on U.S. Army interwar mechanization. Other taskings, events, and shiny objects then intervened, but in recent months, Wayne, Charlie, and I began discussing the project again, and I got started on the current program.

Wayne warned me of some potential problems with enlarging the model to 1/32. He designed the model using raster software, so when the model is enlarged from 1/72 to 1/32 (225 per cent), the panel lines and other details become soft and a little fuzzy. This is most evident in the Marine Corps eagle, globe, and anchor emblem on the bow glacis plate. Also, some parts are intended to be laminated with a second layer of card, and the thickness of these laminations must be adjusted when the model is enlarged (this mainly affects the multiple-lamination suspension assemblies).

At 1/32 scale, the model really needs rivets, track grousers, and other detail that I am unable or unwilling to add. I accept the toy-like appearance of my model and can satisfy my desire for detail by pouring over images of models by the master model builders of our community.

The Build:

I enlarged Wayne’s 1/72 model by printing the parts out at 225 percent on Neenah Bright White 67# card 0.19mm thick. I used Ad tech Crafter’s Precision Glue, which was recommended to me by Missileer (many thanks, John). It is a transparent water-based glue that I find very pleasant to use. Caran d’Ache Neocolor II 7500.025 Green Ochre and Tombow 977 Brown art pens were a close-enough match for edge coloring. I used Tamiya Weathering Master set 87079 pastels to provide a touch of weathering and to fade out join lines.

All of Wayne’s models are beautifully engineered and designed, and the fit of the parts is excellent, even when enlarged. Only one part, the turret glacis plate, didn’t fit properly and had to be replaced. I also modified the gun and its mantlet to more closely approximate the M1919 tank machine gun; fabricated a new anti-ditching tail piece, which in the kit is a solid structure with a framework that is too wide compared to the actual tan; and added spacers to lift the engine exhaust cover off the rear deck of the hull.

Images 1-8 below show the initial stages of construction, including fabrication of a replacement turret glacis plate (Images 4 and 5), folding up of the hull, and inserting an L-tab to strengthen the hull deck and side joint (Image 8).

The suspension frames in Wayne’s kit are built up of a series of laminations of double thickness card (Images 9 and 10 – Wayne also provides a simple version of the frames, shown in the background). I made triple laminations, which collectively didn’t add up to the thickness of the frame, so I added cardboard spacers (Image 11). I also fabricated a more accurate gun mantlet (Image 12) and M1919 tank machine gun shroud (Image 13) using the excellent drawing in George Bradford, AFV Plans: 1914-1938, Armored Fighting Vehicles, Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2010, p. 31.

The only error I found in Wayne’s model is that the anti-ditching tail piece is too wide. It is also a solid assembly, which works fine in 1/72, but not for 1/32 (Image 14). I fabricated a new one, again using George Bradford’s drawing (resized from 1/35 to 1/32) as a guide (Images 15-19). Wayne is going to correct this in his next iteration of the model.

Finally, I fabricated spacers for the engine exhaust cover (Images 20-21).

In the next post, I will show images of the completed model.

More later,


Don

[Don Boose]

Here are images of the completed model. I also built a box to transport the model.

The final images are of the model in company with 1/32 versions of Richard Dery’s Fiddlers Green models of a British Whippet tank and a Renault FT in markings similar to those carried by the light tanks of Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton’s 304th Tank Brigade, American Expeditionary Force, France, during combat operations in 1918.

As Pogo Possum used to say, Eeni Finis.

Next project: WayneMac 1/48 Mk. VIII Heavy Tank

Don

[gomidefilho]

Another fine build. Renault FT are used by Brazilian Army, and two surviving specimens are in museuns and still functional.

[Michael Mash]

Nice images Don of the work and the completed vehicle.
You are teaching us a lot about equipment from this era.
And . . . enjoying the work . . . I hope.
Mike

[Don Boose]

Many thanks for the kind words, gotham, Glen, Mike, Dan, and Péricles!

I have been enjoying making use of my research and modeling these old tanks. I hope to show my Mark VIII soon (I am also building Dave Winfield's KoolWheelz version of the tank in the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movie, which was based on the Mark VIII.

Don