Tank Convertion

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Converting the Airfix Centurion Mk 8 Tank to the Mk I and Mk III

As people who visit this site know, one of the many book projects that we’ve recently undertaken include a fictitious 1946 supplement book and of course Korean War supplement (which is nearly completed). These projects of course involved vehicles and particular tanks (or certain marks of them) that are not readily or cheaply available to the wargamer. Now I’ll say from the start these conversions are really aimed at the wargamer so all you model makers look away now J , in essence they won’t satisfy the rivet counter in all of us, but everybody on the war games table will know what they are. So a lot of artistic licence and ease of the conversion has entered into the mix so to speak

I decided to have a look at converting the humble ‘Airfix’ Centurion which I had noted on certain forums had been made subject to some very clever re-modelling projects. So I thought why not give it a go, why the Airfix version well its cheap and available. Lets look at the kit itself, its showing its age now, a bit like me I actually remember making one of these kits some 40 years ago, it consists of approximately 100 parts so although its not a hard kit to make it’s a bit fiddly and the not all the parts line up that well. The actual kit is loosely based on the Mk 8 with the 105mm gun.

I had two conversions in mind. The first being the Mk III (for Korea) and the second being the Mk I (for the ‘1946’ stuff). In war gaming terms the real noticeable differences from the kit to both conversions concerns the turret and the gun.

Stage 1... assemble the main components of the turret as per the instructions. leaving off the rear escape hatch , the gun and mg on both mods. With the Mk I don’t fit the side storage bins. (see below picture)

Stage 2... We’ll look at the Mk III conversion first mainly because it’s the easier of the two. The gun, find a suitable replacement gun from your spares box and glue it in place, or re-model the gun that was with the kit which is a bit time consuming. Guess which one I chose, yes the hard one, this requires you to first cut the barrel down on the original gun from the kit to the right length (the gun for the Mk III in this particular case was the 20pdr/84mm version which is shorter than the 105mm) and remove the flume extractor that is featured on the airfix kit. Having completed that replace the turret escape hatch at the rear with a round hatch (from the spares box), as far as I’m aware mount this centrally on the Mk III (see below picture). and offset to the right(on pic) re the Mk I

Having glued the gun in place (to the mantlet) you then have to covert the gun mantlet to the canvas covered version, this is done by using a suitable filling/mouldable type compound. I used ‘milliput’ which is a two part compound that once mixed together goes hard (eventually) this allows you to fiddle and remould the canvas effect cover until your happy with the result. When its set, drill the sighting scope hole and the mg hole in the canvas cover.

That’s really it for the Mk III turret, the Mk I is a different kettle of fish, first off the gun mantle and Polsten gun position look totally different to the version modelled on the kit. This area of the turret requires careful and exstensive filing to the new shape and reduction of the mantlet cross area, this in turn allows space for the ‘Polsten’ gun blister position (see below picture)

Once the filing has been done you have to build up the Polsten gun position bulge, I glued a small road wheel to the front of the turret to act as a template base guide for this position (see picture below).

Slowly build up the area with ‘milliput’ this really is done by trial and error. Then replace the main gun with a 17pdr type (if possible from the spares box) and add milliput to the mantlet area to create a canvas covered version, the process for this is as per the Mk III although be it on a smaller scale. Then use the excess milliput to fill the holes left where the stowage bins should go. (see below picture

Having completed adding the mg or cannon (re the Polsten version) the turrets can then under coated with a suitable base green colour. You can then turn your attention to the hull, The real differences regarding the hull are confined to the large stowage boxes situated above the track mudguards and the engine louvers lay out, from a wargamers point of view their not really that noticeable, and a lot of the differences can be hidden with additions of suitable stowage. So being lazy I assembled them as normal and tried to hide the differences.

From a modelling aspect I assembled the hull and wheels/rollers then attached the tracks to both sides before fitting the top track mudguards and track side shields. I merely stapled the tracks together as this area of track can be hidden by the track guard and side shields. (see below pictures)

I then added stowage and undercoated the hull. Applied divisional markings and then started to add shading to the model and dirtied certain engine area’s with dry brushed black. I then carefully painted the stowage and relevant straps. Then painted the appropriate area’s such as the tracks, edge of the mud/track guards with a suitable mud colour. Having allowed everything to dry, I lightly dry brushed the completed model with a light stone colour to give them a dusty used finish. (see below pictures)

I hope you find this article of use, both these conversions having been used in a number of table top battles with great success and they havent been 'set on fire' yet.... wargaming wise of courseJ .