Replicating a photograph pt 7: finished build and some more historical background

It took a solid month, but she is done! This build became a lot more complicated than I had expected at the start, but some minor niggles aside I am quite pleased with the end result. Before I give you a full ‘walk around’ and show you how close I got it to look like the picture, let me first give you some additional historical background.

As we had already established, the vehicle is a Sherman Ic Firefly of the 1st East Riding Yeomanry. The markings on the rear of the vehicle can be read as follows. The 35 on the rear of the bustle probably refers to the individual tank, which belonged to: B Squadron (yellow square) of the 2nd Armoured Regiment (white 52 on red square) of 33rd Armoured Brigade (‘hour glass’ of green and black triangle).

The original of this picture is held at the Imperial War Museum under object number IWM B 11382. The back of the photograph tells us that it was taken on 27 October by Lt. Handford.

The book October 1944. Den Bosch. Bevochten en bevrijd (October 1944. Den Bosch. Fought over and liberated) by Luc van Gent tells us a bit more about the civilians in the picture. The book, published in 1989, is a great source on the liberation of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. It may have some small inaccuracies regarding the vehicles and unit names, but there is a lot of detailed information gathered by interviewing over 200 soldiers and civilians. It also includes a lot of great pictures, including many featuring AFV’s. ‘Our’ photograph can be found on both the cover of the book and on page 126. Funnily enough, the marking of 33rd Armoured Brigade has been blurred in that picture for security reasons.

Anyway, the caption on page 126 mentions that the man carrying his two daughters to safety is called Mr. Van der Sande. His wife, pregnant with their third child at the time, is right behind him. A fragment of her coat can be seen in between the right sponson and the top of the right track of the tank. She had been pushing a pram filled with baby clothes, but had to desert this only moments before the picture was taken, as twigs got into the wheels stopping them from turning.

Finally, the picture was taken at the former Esso petrol station on the Willemplein (Heetmanplein). The square has changed quite a bit since then and the petrol station is no longer there now. This map shows the rough location of the petrol station and the direction the photograph was taken in.

Now for the model, there were two things I was worried about: would the vinyl tracks fit properly and would my painted unit markings look any good? To start with the tracks, they are alright. Not great, but alright. The detail is a little soft compared to the plastic Bronco tracks, but no way in hell was I going to spend 20 hours gluing those buggers together!

The painted unit markings are not great, but not as bad as I had feared either. I cut some simple stencils out of masking tape for the large numbers 35, the yellow and red squares and the hour glass markings of 33rd Armoured Brigade. The numbers 52 proved too small, so I ended up freehanding those. I also freehanded the white rim around the hourglass markings. Right after painting the markings looked pretty bad and I was quite annoyed that I had ruined a kit that I had spent a month and quite a bit of money on. After weathering the tank, though, they look a lot better.

I went for a fairly subtle weathering. I started with a drybrush of a very light skin tone, as this provided a nice contrast to the olive drab but wasn’t as harsh as pure white. Then everything got a black and then a brown wash. Some areas were then highlighted with some more light skin tone. Finally, I added the crew members, who add a nice bit of colour to the otherwise fairly drab (pun intended) colour scheme. And there you have it. Some little niggles here and there, but overall I consider it a success.