Airfix’s USAAF Bomber Resupply Set comes packaged with box art placing its contents next to a B-17, but at least one of the vehicles in the set was a crucial tool for USAAF fighter units, too – especially Ninth Air Force P-47 Thunderbolt units. The M6 Bomb Service Truck, a Chevrolet-produced vehicle developed from the 1940 Chevrolet 1 ½-ton truck, served a critical ron moving ordnance around bases across England and later the European continent. The Ninth Air Force dropped 225,799 tons of bombs during WWII, and most of that was moved from storage to the aircraft by the M6.
In the background, note one of the 362nd FG’s M6 Bomb Service Trucks.
About 7000 M6s were manufactured between 1942 and September 1944, when production halted in favor of the M27, a six-by-six bomb service truck based on the highly successful GMC CCKW. As a truck, it was not impressive, with an 83-horsepower engine burning fuel at an environmentalist-alarming rate of 2.6 miles per gallon. But it was a workhorse – the hoist on the back deck could lift 4,000 pounds, and the truck could tow up to five M5 bomb trailers, each capable of carrying 5,000 pounds of bombs. That means each M6 could move 12 ½ tons of bombs on each trip.
The M6 could also accommodate four passengers, one in the cab next to the driver and three on a bench seat on the rear deck in a very “unsafe at any speed” arrangement. It also had room for ammunition back there.
I was considering ways to scratch-build a 1:72 M6 when Airfix dropped this kit in the autumn of 2016. The model itself is very nice, but there are always ways to improve upon the kit (and drag the build time out). I think I identified most of those opportunities during my build!
Construction starts with the frame and associated components. There were significant mold marks around the frame components, almost all of them on a flat surface, which made clean-up fairly easy. The suspension springs went on next, and Airfix provided much-appreciated positive location points for these. In many 1:72 truck kits, the springs have hard-to-spot location points; get them off, and your vehicle only rests of three wheels!
The frame assembled neatly and removal of flash was quick and easy.
The wheels are a little simplified, but the mounts are not pins but rather large ball socket-like things that insert into the backs of the wheels. The tires slide on over the outside of the wheels, meaning they can be painted separately and added at the end, but they can also be pressed in place to check alignment of the suspension.
The fenders went on neatly, but I took care to make sure they were level up front. The left fender wanted to ride higher than the right one, and I assumed this would have cause problems when the hood was added, so I forced it into place. The placement of the rear deck and driver’s compartment floor was a little iffy, so I built and installed the firewall and dashboard first to provide a point of reference. The gear shift handle broke while I was trying to clean it up, so I made a new one from wire and glued it into the sawed-off mount, then used white glue to form a knob on the top of it. I fashioned clutch, brake and gas pedals from styrene card, and added them to the driver’s side floor. The seats were painted a light olive-tan mixture and set aside for installation later.
The hood, firewall, driver’s compartment and rear deck all in their places.
At this point, I shot the model with its first coat of field drab. I find multiple coats are mandatory for small-scale military models – not because I want a deep finish, but because they have so many angles and recesses that if you wait to paint, it’s easy to find yourself with unpainted areas you can no longer get to!
Sprayed with field drab – coat one of many!
The hood and front end sides were assembled and added to the firewall. Next should have come the grille, but Airfix provided it as a solid item with raised bar detail. That was a letdown after my WC-51 and CCKW-335, with their photoetched grilles. Since the was no photoetched set available, I decided to make my own with lead foil, styrene strip and stiff wire. A surplus Eduard radiator front went in front of the engine, followed by my pretty-good-but-not-perfect grille. About three days later, Eduard came out with its detail set for this kit. You’re welcome.
Isn’t that cute – he tried to make his own grille. It was almost good, too.
In the meantime, I added the toolbox behind the seating area and started work on the hoist assembly. It consists of a U-shaped support and the “trolley,” the bent I-bar that the hoist runs on. These push together at the joint – push hard, because getting them square is critical for alignment later. The assembly fits neatly into the deck – again, the fit is excellent. A hoist crank with gears fits onto a peg on the trolley, making a perfectly nice hoist.
A good view of the hoist and trolley, also showing some of the Eduard details in place.
To complicate matters, Chevrolet threw a bench on the back of the truck, hanging from the trolley. The kit provides this as three parts: a bench, the bench back and the bent metal framework that connected them. The metal framework was out of scale according to my photos, so I made replacements from bent wire. Bending four identical frames was not fun, but once done it looked much more like the real thing.
There’s also a bar at the top of the bench back provided as a separate piece. This drove me crazy – the attachment point wasn’t secure, it was hard to get it aligned in all axes, and it was really easy to knock it off. Part B05 was my least favorite part of the model.
About this time, the Eduard set arrived. My scratch-built grille went in the trash, and the Eduard grille took its place. Eduard’s bumped, with tow hooks, went on the front of the truck in place of the kit part, and non-skid plates went on all the running boards. A new floor for the driver and passenger slipped neatly over my scratch-built gear shifter; Eduard provided a hand brake and winch control handle. All the tool boxes received tiny padlocks. The rear of the truck got a new rear plate, tow points and a reflector. A new winch head meant carefully sawing the end of the hoist away and replacing it with photoetched parts. All that work was totally worth it.
That’s more like it: Eduard’s photoetched grille’s worth the cost of the whole set, but the other details are great too.
The model was given another coat of field drab, and then the tiny details started to be added. The rear frame for the roof was painted and added, and then I sanded the molded-on windshield wipers from the clear windshield, which was then polished back into clarity, masked and painted. The steering wheel was set into place, and I made armrests from wire for each seat, then glued the completed seats into their spots in the cab. The vertical supports for the roof were a bit thick, so I replaced them with thick lead solder, bent to shape and CA-glued in place.
The canvas roof itself was painted using Testors ModelMaster beige and was set aside until final assembly. I painted the clear headlight bullets silver at their backs, then field drab, leaving the fronts clear to simulate lenses. These were carefully glued to the fenders behind the new photoetched headlight guards.
Now it was time for the final coat of paint, followed by a brush-applied layer of Future as a gloss coat for the decals. I used most of the very good kit decals, supplementing them with bumper markings for the 362nd Fighter Group, 379th Fighter Squadron. I still had a few that Norm Filer had made for my Jeep project more than 10 years ago. I also jumbled the numbers on the hood, making sure they stayed in the ranges assigned to M6s – I found that information on-line on a vehicle restoration website. When the decals were all down, I applied a heavy wash to the model and the flat coated the model, then gave the decals what I call a “fade coat” of heavily-thinned field drab, which reduces the brightness of the white markings
After decals, the stars and other markings looked too bright, so they received a “fade coat” of very thin field drab paint.
Mostly assembled – missing only the side supports for the roof.
Little details came next. Very carefully, I wrapped some braided silver thread around the hoist drum, using tweezers. Only five or six turns were needed to simulate the cable on the reel. The other end was stretched over the winch’s roller and head, measured, carefully, and cut to length. A photoetched hook purloined from an ancient Verlinden F6F set (it was a catapult hook in an earlier life) was CA-glued not to the cable but to the bumper – this hook was often attached to the rear bumper. Once the hook was in place, the cable was trimmed, then carefully CA-glued to the hook.
The windshield and canvas top were added, followed by the addition of Eduard’s very fine windshield wipers. The final addition was the tires. I’d become weary of unrealistic looking tires on 1:72 vehicles, so I scoured the web to find well-rendered tires on 1:35 models to learn some of the secrets. Let me just say this: pastels. Not only do they replicate the wear and weathering seen on tires but they impart a dead-flat quality that even flat coats can’t deliver. Once the pastels were applied in a satisfactory way, I added them to the wheels and ran a little thin CA glue into the joint from the back of the wheels, taking care to get alignment correct.
The M6 was finished at this point, but one of the clubs I’m a member of has build meetings and I needed something to work on, so I started the M5 bomb trailer included in the set. This is a remarkably quick and easy build – I had the trailer together in an hour or so, and after two hours had added the details, applied a coat of paint and prepped it for decals. The tires were given the same treatment as those on the M6 and added at the very end of the process. (I’ve since found a photo of an M5 with a V-1 on it – another great diorama possibility!)
Now, I needed a base. The 362nd saw a lot of combat during the winter of 1944/45, and I’d thought about doing a snow scene for a long time. This would be a good opportunity to learn a new technique. I selected an appropriate-sized base in the form of a left-over trophy from Silicon Valley Scale Modelers’ “Pimp My Model” contest (from 2008, maybe?) and popped off the resin plates on its front. I masked off the edges and applied a layer of scenic glue, then sprinkled on a layer of Woodland Scenics fine cinders ballast. The reason for this nearly-black base? I figure the vehicles would chew up the snow and get down to the frozen mud below; the black ballast would work well for this.
Doing some research on the ways railroad modelers do snow, I found a great article that identified six ways railroaders make snow, from simply painting the terrain white to various mixes of baby powder and baking soda with PVA glue to what the author said was his favorite: mixing Woodland Scenics soft flake snow with water effects. This looked like cold, wet snow, so I decided to try it.
The water effects material isn’t cheap – a bottle costs around $20. The good news is that in 1:72, it’ll handle four or five dioramas easily! This was poured into a bowl, followed by an equal amount of the soft flake snow, and the two were mixed as best as possible. The result is a nightmare to work with – fluffy, sticky and prone to adhere better to itself than to the base. I ended up frosting the base like a cake, leaving an area in the center for a pathway. The pathway received PVA glue mixed with the soft flake snow – I wanted it to look slushier and more travelled than the edges.
I added a few details to the mix: several 55-gallon drums and a spare drop tank on one side, and a few tufts of Silflor grass on the other. A little extra snow was added to the drums, and a bit more soft flake snow was sprinkled on for good measure. When everything looked even, I lightly misted a coat of water over the base to smooth things out even more.
The M6 benefits from little details in the cab and on the hoist, like the cable attached to the bumper.
The slushy pathway was worked over with a pencil repeatedly as it dried to give it a little texture. Ultimately, that worked pretty well; I had to work hard to ensure that truck and trailer had places for their wheels to go so they all contacted the ground!
The trailer received two bombs I’d prepared for future P-47 builds – they came from the Tamiya kit. They were assembled, sanded smooth, painted and then had their bands applied by chucking the fins in a motor tool and applying yellow stripes with a fine brush. Further weathering with pastels made them look as though they’d been in a field dump awaiting their turn to be dropped on the Germans.
A good overview of the figures in place in the diorama.
The figures came from CMK’s U.S. Army truck drivers set. They went together reasonably well, and they had the right cold-weather gear as seen in my photos. The heads were separate pieces, so I could position them looking skyward, as though they were awaiting the return of their squadron’s planes. (One viewer of the diorama was startled to see figures seemingly looking up at him!)
Hey, you up there! Did you really have to stick us in the snow?!?
The elements were all place on the diorama and that was that! Project finished. In the future, with the snow effects, I will plan ay areas that should be fresh snow white before applying it; the snow flake/water effects mixture kept becoming more translucent and more dirty-looking over the next two weeks. Lesson learned for my next Battle of the Bulge-era diorama!
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