LVT Series

Some of my club mates are working up to doing a Tarawa display game of Bolt Action for Beachhead 2016 wargames show in Bournemouth later this year. They had most of the infantry sorted out, but were looking at the cost of Amphibs for the USMC force. If you've looked at the cost you'll have found it to be quite exorbitant, particularly if you want waterline versions as well as full hulls. Then I remembered a half finished project from April 2014. So I've been finishing up a series of LVTs with interchangable components and slot in superstructures which can now be found in the United States section of my web store, at rather resonable prices given the competition.

That's the full version, with all the component parts, you can see that the slot in superstructures will need a little bit of sanding to fit smoothly into the hulls. Best to do this before painting, unlike me.

LVT-2 light amphibious transport

  It has been a long time since I've done any proper reflection painting, but with windows this big the standard 'blue paint - blue ink' routine would have been a cop-out.

Making the interior of the transport's waterline hull look realistic was a bit of a challenge. The passenger compartment extends quite a way below the waterline. The detail flattened, but it is there, so it's not entirely necessary to fill the compartment with stuff to get a good effect. Though grabbing a bunch of spare USMC heads, and a couple of cut-off-at-the-knees gunners will likely add to the realism.

LVT(a)-2 armoured amphibious transport

The armoured version is almost identical, though lacking the large windows of it's predecessor.

LVT(a)-1 amphibious tank

This one was a wee bit more work. I originally tried printing some crew for the tub guns, but it didn't work out. I am waiting on new printing run which will add some machine gun shields, a couple of 50cal machine guns and some bulkier 30cal machine guns. The current 30cals are correctly scaled, but are a bit fragile.

I also plan to do an LVT(a)-4 version with the 75mm howitzer turret.


~ Bob