Tamiya

1/48 British Sherman Firefly IC

Kit Number: 32532

Reviewed by  Andrew Birkbeck, IPMS# 27087

MSRP: $24.00 Yet another excellent addition to the ever-growing Tamiya 1/48th vehicle range is Kit 32532, the British Sherman Firefly IC. Note that there were a couple of different Sherman Firefly variants, this one being based on the Sherman M4 Early Production vehicles (as kitted by Tamiya, Kit 32505) and fewer of this variant were produced than the Firefly VC and Hybrid IC vehicles from what I can deduce. As with earlier Tamiya 1/48th armor kits, the Firefly IC comes with a cast metal lower hull, along with approximately 140 injection plastic parts, plus polycaps and Philips screws to secure the hull bottom to the hull top. Included in the box are full instructions, plus decals allowing the modeler to build 4 different vehicles. The injection molded plastic parts are all flash-free, and very crisply engraved, with the only ejection marks being on the inner surfaces of the track links, as well as the inner surfaces of the hull and turret hatches. Easy enough to deal with via my favorite "filler" for small issues, Mr Surfacer 500 from Gunze Sangyo. Sadly the cast metal lower hull is as under-detailed as ever with much of the Tamiya 1/48th armor range, with some gaps needing filling at the front of the hull around the drive sprocket area. Other than this, no filler was required. Being a Tamiya Sherman, there is the usual gaping hole above the tracks, allowing one to shine a light right into the hull interior. This is easily fixed with some sheet styrene and a few minutes of measuring and cutting. Easy to fix, but nonetheless something I wish Tamiya would stop doing, as ALL their Sherman kits, in both 35th and 48th scale suffer from this problem. One other Tamiya issue: the hull welds on this kit are depicted as trenches, rather than raised, as they should be. I didn't fix this on the review sample, but some fine lengths of stretched sprue can be cut out and made to look okay if one wants raised welds. As with the earlier Sherman kits from Tamiya, construction begins with the lower hull and road wheels etc., and track alignment is aided by a pin protruding from the top of the front return roller, with the tracks being injection molded link and length pieces. Unlike the tracks from my earlier reviewed Tamiya Cromwell, the Sherman's tracks are much beefier, and therefore much easier to assemble. No problems were experienced at all with the construction of the tracks. Nor were there any fit issues with the road wheels or the upper and lower hull parts as there had been with the Cromwell kit. In fact no fit issues whatsoever were encountered, this kit being an example of superior Tamiya engineering at its very finest. When it came to painting this kit, I again used the "SCC 15 Olive Drab" mixture I had found on the internet, and earlier used on the Cromwell tank:    XF-1 Black: 1 part    XF-26 Deep Green: 8 parts    XF-52 Flat Earth: 8 parts Following painting, one moves onto the decals, which as usual from Tamiya are thicker than the best aftermarket decals available, but this is rather a moot point, since virtually no one makes any 1/48th aftermarket armor decals! With an application of Johnson's "Future" to protect the model and provide a smooth surface to lay down the decals on, everything worked out nicely. I chose "Yellow 24", if for no other reason than yellow is my favorite color, and it makes for a more colorful vehicle! This is option "A" on the instruction sheet, being a vehicle from 8th Squadron, East Riding Yeomanry, attached to the 33rd Armoured Brigade fighting in January/February 1945 in the Ardennes region of Belgium. To conclude then: another highly commendable addition to Tamiya's growing range of 1/48th armored vehicle kits, and perfect for anyone wishing to build a lovely little model out of the box with the minimum of fuss. Fifteen hours start to finish, and I'm a slow builder! Contrast this with a 1/35th scale DML Sherman kit that I have just started. The DML kit is breathtaking in its detail, but this adds dramatically to the time needed to complete the kit. Working on one of the six sets of bogies took me about 2.5 hours! So if you want a rest from "super kits", I HIGHLY recommend Tamiya's Sherman Firefly kit. Note: you will see in the pictures a short length of metal tubing projecting out of the front of the Firefly's hull: this is not included in the kit, but was put there by your humble reviewer to mount a spare road wheel, which I have yet to install as there were no spare ones in the kit!

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