1:48 Periscopes with Covers – US Sherman

The cover that combat experience forced

Vehicles of the first series carried the head of the periscope bare, protruding only slightly above the plate. A single ricocheting fragment or a burst of small-arms fire was enough to blind the station. The answer was a low cast cover that wrapped the head from the front and from above and left only the direction of view open. From 1943 it appears on newly built machines and at the same time it was retrofitted by units in the field, so the same vehicle type can be built with the covers or without them, depending on when and where it served.

Box contents

The manufacturer states five complete assemblies in the raised state and five lowered, all of them fitted with a cover. The cover is cast together with the body, so there is no gluing of two minute parts and no risk that it will end up turned off the axis.

How to choose the right version

Settle the period first. Machines from the start of the campaign did not have the covers yet. Fit them to an early version and you create an inconsistency that a period photograph will expose at once.

Avoid regularity. In the field they were added gradually, so a combination of a covered commander's station and an uncovered driver's station is documented and does the model more good than uniformity.

A deep shadow under the rim. A dark gap lay under the rim of the cover. A thin line of dark paint gives the part a depth the casting on its own does not have.

The set also serves anyone building a wreck or an abandoned machine. An empty cover with no glass is a rewarding way of saying without words what happened to the vehicle.