I recently picked up a 1975 Tamiya T-34/76 1943 (#35059) to build with my father (He’s never built a kit before). I wanted something easy for him yet interesting for me, and the older 1/35 Tamiya kits presented the perfect challenge. However, in the process of preparing for the build, I came across the T-34-57, a version of the mod. 1942/1943 fitted with a high-velocity ZiS-4 57mm cannon. Reference photos are quite grainy
but there appear to be at least a couple of these tanks built on the later iteration of the 1943 model.
Since there are no surviving examples of these tanks, a walkaround was obviously unavailable on primeportal. I instead turned to War Thunder, a game I’ve been playing for quite some time. Handily, the Russian tech tree has both the 1942 AND the 1943 variants of the T-34-57. Between reference photos and the War Thunder model, it appears to have the early 1943 angular fuel tanks, the early 1943 “Mickey Mouse” turret, but the late 1943 2 rubber, 3 cast road wheel tyre arrangement. Now, the Tamiya kit provides parts to completely recreate the photos/WT model, but for some reason I’ve been dead set on building this model with a cupola. Any recommendations? Also, these are the cannon barrels I’ve been looking at, I’m not sure which one would be best.
eBay
eBay
