HeavyArty
Nice. This will be great to make a Vietnam gun truck with since it includes the whole trailer base, unlike AFV Club’s M35 “Nancy” guntruck.
Nice. This will be great to make a Vietnam gun truck with since it includes the whole trailer base, unlike AFV Club’s M35 “Nancy” guntruck.
Some schmucks over at BrightCloud thinks that the Dynamo Models website:
is about nudity and pornography.
They ought to change their company name to Not-very-brightCloud
i always fancied building one of these with a general lee/dukes of hazzard rebel flag or a texas state flag on the front cover.
Sorry, couldn’t tell from the pic on first glance. I believe the truck was an M35 2 1/2 ton though, not an M54 5-ton. An M54 rear bed is different.
Here’s a few more M54 Quad Gun Trucks
This one is my favorite. I will most likely build it.
Star decals makes a sheet that covers this one and “A Whole Lota Lead” above. They actually do 3 sheets for M54 Quad gun trucks and 7 sheets total that cover just about every type of Vietnam gun truck that was used. Echelon also has five sheets for Vietnam gun trucks.
Lots more info on Vietnam gun trucks in this older thread too.
1/35 M35A1 Quad gun truck - Armor/AFV / Cold War - KitMaker Network
Here is another oddity you can build from it.
An M548 Gun Track(?). I believe this was only a test vehicle and never fielded.
AFV Club offered it as a kit for a limited time. It came with the M45 quad mount parts from the M35 “Nancy” gun truck and resin parts for the M20 trailer.
Maybe it was field-tested at least…
Here’s what I found on another forum :
“Though the M548’s main purpose was to carry cargo, that didn’t stop some of their crews from improvising in various ways. One of these improvisations was done by Battery G of the 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment of the 23rd Infantry Division on a M548 nicknamed “Swamp Fox”. This M548 was modified to carry the M55 quad .50 cal AA turret. Because of this modification, the canopy could not be fitted, however, the cabin can and was, along with the extra .50 cal. The M55 turret was an improvement over the M45 turret (seen on the M16), featuring a more powerful generator. The example that Swamp Fox used was fitted with addon shields on either side of the turret. The M55 turret weighs less than 2 tons, likely allowing the vehicle to retain its amphibious capabilities. Not much else is known about the Swamp Fox, however, it’s likely that it was a one-off field modification.”
https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/540449-m548-swamp-fox-ditching-the-half-track/
H.P.
Here are the postwar details I was talking about (the picture montage is from an earlier thread
H.P.
It’s from David Doyle’s Gun Trucks book (Ampersand Publishing)
https://archive.armorama.com/review/12270/index.htm
https://modelingmadness.com/scott/books/amp/guntruck.htm
Great book indeed !
H.P.
Saw this update over at Finescale Modeler. It looks like Dynamo Models made the Vietnam corrections.
“Hello everyone, I’ve come to give you news of the M55, sorry for the wait…I have the right to share the following photos. If there are defects, do not hesitate.”
Very nice. The Vietnam version parts look great. Great job at listening to modelers and adjusting as needed. One of these will look great in the back of a guntruck.
@Sylvain59 Sylvain, would it be possible to buy just the engine and electrical box 3D parts to update the older AFV Club or Dragon M55s to Vietnam standards? Maybe you could do an update set for them with some of your newer parts, or of all the 3D parts?
I ordered 1 kit and 1 set of 3D parts to update the AFV Club parts straight from Dynamo on Apr 15.
I contacted Dynamo from the contact email on their web page: support@dynamo-models.com
Sylvain got back to me promptly and was very easy to deal with. The total with shipping was only about $75. Not too bad in my book.
Website:
I just got a P.O. tracking notice. I should have them tomorrow. I’ll let you know how they look upon arrival.
I missed the postman on Thurs and the package had to be signed for. I was able to get to the P.O. today and got the box. It was packaged in a large box w/lots of peanuts. The kit box is heavy cardboard with a plastic box inside for the 3D parts. Everything came through w/out any breakage. The plastic is the Dragon kit. They parts are crisp and clean w/no flash. The 3D parts are exquisite; they look awesome. You get a few extra pieces too; six total ammo cans w/ammo belts and five ammo can holders. I won’t post more pics as it looks just like the ones above.
The decals are awesome; very crisply printed and with lots of extras. There are white and yellow can markings for the WWII tombstone cans; a total of 24 of each color, you only need 4. The same for the Vietnam ammo can decals, there are 36 and you only need 4. Overall it looks like a great kit, I highly recommend it.
A side note that might rain on some parades to some extension but deserves to be mentioned. For what I can see Dynamo kit features the long-nose turret shield originally designed for the M16 half tracks though the box art shows the shorter snub-nose.
The Quad .50 had two different designs of gun shield assemblies, a shorter on the M45C mount, and a slightly longer on the M45D/F mount. Difference was that the shorter M45C was designed for the trailers and M45D/F was made for the M16 half-tracks (and navy IRC) that had higher mounts for a lower depression (as these were mounted on elevated positions).
I don’t know the mix of these during WWII but “post M16” both M45C and D/F ended up on the gun trucks in Vietnam (and later liberally applied on all types of mounts as of collectors). If you have Doyles Gun truck books there is a good shot on p.49 in the old one and p.60 in the new Squadron signal of both types on Quad-trucks in the same shot.
The M45C is still predominantly seen on the trailers, though people can probably dig up some pic the D/F in ground position trailer as I assume both was used on trailers as the M16 was retired. As seen on gun trucks in Vietnam an additional base ring was sometimes added to the trailer bed to give better height. Both M45C and D/F used single and double ring outfits on Gun trucks in Vietnam.
Pic left. Snub-nose [a nickname of mine, ie. unofficial] standard, single base ring. Pic right. Long-nose on a double base ring on Gun truck (this is not an original vehicle but a museum one, but montage is identical to the ones used in Nam). Note how M45C ends above the bolted turret ring and its blunt nose, and how the longer nose M45D/F “M16” with its sharper end is covering it.
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Hello Paul!
Welcome to the forums and thanks a lot for your interesting remarks. The difference you’re writing about, while definitely something to pay attention to is not so easy to spot, unless you have a side by side comparison like you did here.
It’s no wonder Dragon and Dynamo kits have a halftrack style design in them - the Dragon kit was a way to repurpose halftrack sprues, you even get a halftrack windshield on the clear parts sprue.
I have to compare the Dragon shield with the AFV Club shield, I think AFV Club shield would be different style and maybe could be substituted here.
Here are some photos of my Dynamo kit build. I added an extra ring to the base, made from leftover AFV Club parts:
Thanks for looking and have a nice day
Paweł
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Than you Pawel and a really impressive kit build you got there! I’m most likely gonna get one too as soon as I can figure out what to do shield wise.
Though I haven’t checked them all and its hard to tell in that small scale from pictures not taken from the side, but at a glance it seems that many (or most) 1/35 scale M55’s & M16’s are actually various composite solutions of the C-D/F shields that tricks the eye.
As you say in reality they are hard to distinguish by them selves unless seen from the horizontal front or side (or know what to look for), and even harder in 1/35 possibly for reason above. And it doesn’t help that the one Doyle have as reference pics in his books seems to be a cut off long nose D/F shield to look like a C for a M55 staging purpose. If this is something of a home made job or unknown version of the shield I don’t know (or some other motivation behind this), but at time being its the only one I have seen and it is NOT standard at least up to mid 1960’s. [As often with military material there is always something one have missed or some explanation out there so I’m open for suggestions, but keep an eye on it till then as it is a land mine concerning reference].
Here is another comparison shot to train the eyes a bit. Its obvious a difference when lining them up like this. Still can’t say if the snub-nosed C is a modified D/F or they were produced separately as two different versions with different angels on the shape. [Left one is Alamy, right one by someone called Steve Heeb.]
Check the various Star Decal sheets of M55 quad gun trucks as they offer a few; some have ground mounts as well. They come with templates for the different shields on them.
I used a Star Decals sheet and shield templates recently on my “Easy Rider” gun truck.
M54A2 Quad .50 Guntruck “Easy Rider” - Armor/AFV / Cold War - KitMaker Network
Wow nice! Hey, I saw this one before! I mean your truck. Awesome.
Damn I have to get those decals. Really good templates for the gun shields.
And at least if Star decals are correct in size one could use them as a sort of guide for a scalpel job snubbing the nose off the M45 gun shield. Notice how the stripes covers the vertical front, that’s what we want on the 45C.
Unfortunately, the Star Decal for the nose armor is not a one-piece decal. You have to paint the white arc and the red stripes are each an individual straight-line decal of varying lengths. I placed them all on then retraced the arc using blue paint above to get the angled tops of the red stripes. They are in the green box below.
You are instructed to “Cut to fit” on the instruction sheet.
Luckily, the side armor stripes and stars are solid decals, not individual pieces like the nose armor stripes.
My name is James Lyles, author of several books on Vietnam gun trucks. I built Eve Of Destruction back in 2001 and King Kong in 2003. I’ve been wanting to build a Quad 50 gun truck with the M45C turret shield and thought I’d give it a try. I converted an M45D shield from a Kirin resin kit and found that it also fits perfectly on the Halftrack frame. Here are a few pictures of the new M45C shield placed on the unfinished Halftrack quad assembly if I can figure out how to post pictures.
Hello James!
Cool to see you on the forums here - I’m a big fan of your books!
That shield is looking good - maybe you could post a picture of it side by side with the kit part, for comparison? It would also be cool to take some measurements. That Kirin set might be really hard to get for some, and on the other hand we now have 3D printing, that might be the way to go given the measurements mentioned above.
Thanks for sharing and have a nice day!
Paweł
Hi James. That quad shield is looking good. The Dynamo kit is really nice. Their 3D Vietnam parts are well done. As you can see above, I used it on my Easy Rider quad gun truck recently.
Thank you, glad to be here. That Kirin kit I have is a junk kit. Many of the parts were missing so I didn’t mind experimenting with it. The Tamiya M16 Halftrack shield is identical. I think Kirin must have used it to cast theirs. The flash isn’t working on my camera all of a sudden but here’s the M16 Halftrack’s M45 shield beside the M45C shield I made from the Kirin kit. The angles of the two shields are much different and of course the M45C shield is shorter.
Keep in mind the Halftrack and Kirin shields are a bit smaller than the Dynamo shield and the AFV Nancy shield. In fact the Halftrack shield will fit inside them. see pic
This is the way I did the conversion. It can be done with the Dynamo or the AFV
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Thank you.
This seems like a great place to air some of my complaints about the AFV Nancy kit. 
Too bad AFV didn’t come to me for advice.
I’ll get some of my notes together and post some discrepancies I’ve found about that Nancy kit and the way many, many people are building it incorrectly.
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I’m getting a list together.
