I think the fog lights weren’t extensively used until 1973; you can also see that they relocated the spare tracks to the turret, rather than on the hull (to make space for an extra stowage box), which leads me to suspect that these updates were made before YK. I even think that the rear stowage rack (on my build) was done for 1973, but not 100% certain of this. The Academy kit makes an M51 from YK, while the Tamiya builds an earlier 6-Day War model.
Used the decals from Academy’s M60A1 Blazer to add on the canvas panels on the turret. These were rather thin and I broke both on one side, but I made it work.
This is my reference for my build. This M51 is part of the Tank Museum collection at Bovington. It is a 1967 configured M51 with the large spotlight up front, but unlike many of the M51s I’ve seen, it sports T-84 rubber chevron tracks, (also seen on the “Fury” M4A2E8 Sherman at Bovington) as opposed to the more common T-80 Metal Chevron tracks, used on Israeli HVSS Shermans, like the M50 or M51.
Is from the movie “The Big Red One”; its a scene where a group of German soldiers play dead while the squad of Americans, led by Lee Marvin, march into the area; it leads to an ambush, and eventually to a scene involving a pregnant woman giving birth inside the tank.
The movie was filmed in Israel, so they used a few old M51s as stand-ins for German tanks throughout the movie.
Yup… just finished building this for the 2nd time (1st one got damaged during a house move) the Academy kit is excellent (apart from the figures which are subpar…)
