That reminds me - apropos of not very much at all; during my first posting in a Corps HQ in Germany, the Corps Commander held a study day. This meant that nearly every Lieutenant Colonel and above, in the whole of BAOR would attend.This would be around 1972. I was a co-worker with the Intelligence section, one of who was quite an accomplished model maker. A series of models were required to be built to support the intelligence aspect of the study day.
My modelling days weren’t too far behind me (I realised that due to the inherent fragility of the hobby I’d probably have to put it on hold for around 22 years while I pursued my military career!) so I threw my hat into the ring. The Intelligence Section took me up on the idea and I was tasked with producing a model of a T-55 with the KMT-4 mine plough. For this the only game in town was this, now ancient, Tamiya kit:
Borrowing some tools from my Intelligence Corps colleague, I beavered away in the office on several Saturday mornings (the barrack room back then being not very conducive to much at all apart from fighting and squabbling, sleeping, polishing and cleaning, and on occasion, brokering deals with ones comrades when, ahem, entertaining the fairer sex; the latter situation completely passing me by of course; I was only 17 and didn’t really know which way was up).
So it was, using whatever really I could find, card - as in real card - not the plastic variety, some plastic tubing which I think came off discarded fountain pen ink cartridges, and hacked up chunks of sprue. In the end I produced a more or less decent rendition of the vehicle, finishing it in a Humbrol olive green; the thing is, as the Intelligence Section provided me with reference photographs, which were classified secret, my model was deemed to be secret too, and was afforded the same bureaucratic procedures and storage as a classified document!
There was one other task which came my way: a unique East German armoured engineer vehicle had been spotted up near the Inner German Border, the Section’s RAOC photographer scrambled in a helicopter to photograph it, and “Yes” it was me folks who had to build it. I baulked at tackling this in 1:35, so opted for a Roco Minitanks T-54 as the base kit. The real thing must have been based on the ZSU-57-2 chassis as it only had 4 road-wheels per side. There was an armoured, shaped superstructure which again, I fashioned out of cardboard, a mine roller (for which I used curtain hanging attachments), and a few other details which I now forget. Again, this was classified secret(!)
As I say, nothing really to do with being monitored by the government, but it’s the only time any of my models have been thus classified! Come the Study Day, I was mortified to be denied access (where as the Int Sect obviously were all part and parcel, some even wearing Sov kit), plus I was only a lowly Private. However, my direct boss, a Royal Signals Major insisted I be allowed to attend.
It was quite gratifying when a US Army officer congratulated me on my builds.
Apologies for the hijack, but it just triggered a memory of a classified model build!
