Hi Jay, the types of Shermans are well known to me, I did a Jumbo somewhere in 2011 and a M51 recently. Fact is that I never had them side by side and never noticed how bulky a Jumbo can look when close to a “normal” hull.
I will do a fast experiment with my own.
Thanks for sharing your S-Team
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Hi Steo, it always amazes me how much a M4A3E2 turret resembles the T23 turret. Until you put them side by side 
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That’s not too surprising, of course, since the former is essentially a thickened version of the latter.
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For my Sherman Vc I am looking for pictures of the inside of both the drivers’ hatch and commanders hatch. Specifically for the colors of the padding. I found great pictures of the loaders’ hatch, but the other 2 are quite elusive…
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I would be hugely surprised if the Comd hatch padding was a different colour to loaders … maybe a slight tone variation but I would say the original base colour is the same.
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I am not sure… The loaders’ hatch was added later to facilitate entrance and extraction of the loader… Would they replace the padding of the commanders’ hatch so they look the same? Or was the same color used in the first place?
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Fair point if some hatches were later additions. But any turrets that had 2 hatches made at the same plant at the same time would have the same colour. Finding any colour images is tricky as I just found out …
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The photo you posted is from the Firefly of the Belgian Royal Museum.
The commander’s cupola hatches and the driver’s hatches do not have padding
Edit: The split hatch cupola did have some padding that photos show
I remembered that later.
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That’s correct for the single-piece commander’s hatch and the large drivers’ hatches. The two-piece commander’s hatch had padding on the door without a periscope, and the small drivers’ hatches also had a pad on the inside, but all of these are often hard to see in photos because they don’t face the camera or there’s other stuff in the way.
The colour, though, I’m not sure about. I would go with the same kind of olive drab or khaki cloth used on American vehicles’ seat covers.
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Correct… You are well informed indeed!
I also saw a picture of an instruction manual showing the same padding. Again in black and white…
The colour on your photo seems to pretty much on par with the surrounding hatch. That would make it OD?
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It doesn’t need to be OD — all you can say about the colours in black and white photos is how light or dark they are relative to each other. You can easily have two totally different colours that look equally bright in black and white.
And this is ignoring the fact that photos in American manuals are always heavily airbrushed, so you don’t even see the shade there was in the original photo there, but the contrast that the person wielding the airbrush put in. It may have been enhanced to improve appearance, for example, or reduced to de-emphasise something.
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The museum Firefly tanks I managed to find do not have the padding unfortunately.
Buccaneer
Little John
Australian Armour and Artillery museum
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I was referring to the photo Nikos posted 
The TM pictures never look natural, so I never would use them as a reference…
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As I said: it is quite elusive… Same goes for the padding on the drivers’ hatch.
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Do you have the rest of the photos from the Belgian Museum tank?
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exluding the tracks the tank is now built and im starting on the flail section which will be sliw going.
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A great reference photo from August 1944 France regarding camouflage paint, stowage, crew uniforms and casting numbers…
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That’s a bit of a simplification, but sure.
And we all know that when Hollywood says “based on” it means “nothing like it”.
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Ah, yes, I see that now if I scroll back. The forum hiding the possibility to quote stuff until you select text in a message doesn’t make it easier to follow a conversation, Mr. Atwood.
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