Sherman turret conversions (2) A Sherman ARV

 Another modelling candidate for my heap of spare Sherman turrets was a Sherman ARV. The ARV Mark 1 is just a capped off hull, but I wanted to do the crane version as it is more striking. Once more the pile of PSC Sherman sprue came to the rescue. 

Looking at photos of real ARVs, they seem to have built the cranes using both 75mm and 76mm turrets, but I had some spare 75mm ones in my sprue heap, so used one of those instead.

First job, blank off the gun mantlet and add some hatches. Like the Firefly, I didn't have a spare split hatch mounting, but as this is a recovery vehicle I just used a spare single piece 76mm turret hatch instead.

Next up was constructing the A frame crane. Now IRL this was attached to the hull via two swivels, but my cunning plan was to glue it the sides of the turret so I could just put it on any vehicles hull. I had some plastruct I profile girder, so I made it out of that, even though most of them seemed to have round supports instead. The girder would have more definition I thought.

I added an approximation of the rear support. As the turret is removeable, it is just resting on the hull rear. I rather gingerly propped this up while it all set in place.

Once it had dried overnight, time for a bit of detailing. I added a winch (scrounged from an M3 halftrack kit with the frame mount cut down) and a representational pully at the top of the A frame. Some of them seem to have had some sort of notional armament, so I added a .50 cal AAMG to the turret top. 

I added a couple of swivels to the bottom of the A frame, which would also help locate it on the hull better. I did much the same thing on the Bergepanzer III conversions I did last year.

Finally I bodged, up a sort of tow hook attachment thing out of bits which made the A frame support look a bit more interesting.

A dollop of OD paint and a drybrush, and it doesn't look bad at all.

You can see why I went with I girders and not round Poles as the girder edges stand out well. 

All set to recover some tanks! Why should the Germans have all the recovery tank fun.