Dragon 1/35 M6 Heavy Tank

Following the Chief of Infantry recommendation from 20 May 1940, the US Army Ordnance Corps started to work on a 50-ton heavy tank design. Initially a multi-turreted design was proposed, with two main turrets armed with low-velocity T6 75 mm (2.95 inch) guns, one secondary turret with a 37 mm gun, and a coaxial .30 caliber (7.62 mm) machinegun, and another secondary turret with a 20 mm gun and a coaxial .30 caliber machine gun. Four .30 caliber machine guns were to be installed in ball mounts, two in the glacis (front) plate and two in the rear corners of the hull. The project was approved on 11 June 1940 and the vehicle received the designation Heavy Tank T1. The design was somewhat similar in concept to multi-turreted breakthrough tanks developed in Europe in the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, such as the 1925 British Vickers A1E1 Independent or the Soviet T-35 of the early 1930s. Disadvantages of these "land dreadnoughts", namely their excessive size, difficulty in coordinating actions of the crew, and high production costs, led to abandonment of the concept in Europe.

Despite undergoing several modifications, the M6 was, in the end, very much a white elephant. Though a total of forty tanks were built, they never saw combat. These vehicles basically were used for war bond drives and were declared obsolete in 1944. Any development work on these tanks ceased several years earlier, allowing designers and engineers to concentrate on the Pershing.

Three basic variants of this tank were developed and Dragon has already produced the M6A1 and will undoubtedly do the other version as well as perhaps the final one-off and a whiffer as well. This is the plain M6 with the cast upper hull. To Dragon's credit, this piece is molded as a single structure. Most of the rest of the kit is identical to the earlier kit. There are four sets of Sherman bogies on each side along with a large structure covering it like on a Matilda.

A couble row of return rollers  are provided. Box-like structures hold the outer shield in place. Each of these shields also contains four sets of Sherman bogies so you have eight sets on each side. Hope you like painting road wheels!

The main and coaxial guns are nicely molded with the recoil mechanism that fits inside the turret. A .50 cal machine gun fits atop the large turret. There is some detail on the inside of the hatches so you can pose these open if you so desire. DS tracks are use 'for convenience' according to the PR from Dragon, but I think they felt that doing all those track links would be quite tedious. Frankly, I like DS tracks as they are easy to assemble and easy to paint. I say assemble as there are two lengths for each side to join together.

Markings are provided for two vehicles, both of them at Fort Knox in 1942 and both minimally marked.  

This tank would be the T1E2, or the middle production versions of which 8 were built. Like most US tanks in the Dragon inventory, the parts count is not scary, this one having 277 pieces, most of them dedicated to the bogies, I'm sure. If you like big tanks and those that are bit unusual, well this one is for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M6_heavy_tank

May 2015

Thanks to www.dragonmodelsusa.com  for the preview kit. You can find this kit at your favorite hobby shop or on-line retailer.