Modelling the M3/M5 Stuart Light Tank

Rating:
Summary: We Could Use More of Zaloga's How-to books
Review: Steve Zaloga focuses on 1/35 scale Stuart models beginning with the Tamiya kit introduced in 1974 and brings us up-to-date with the AFV Club M3A3 kit of 2003. After some preliminary advice, like don't buy Model Kasten after-market tracks unless you're a glutton for extra work, Zakoga builds the AFV M3A3 pretty much out-of-the-box, because the box contains so very much. He then moves on to more difficult projects: cross-kitting the Tamiya M3 with the Academy M3A1, resulting in a beaufiful Soviet M3A1. Zaloga then goes on to show how to correct the dimensional problems of the Tamiya M5A1. There's a section called "Other Stuart Modeling Projects" and includes modeling a British Honey from an early Tamiya kit; an exercise no longer necessary thanks to Academy; the Academy kit becomes an earlier M3; an old Tamiya becomes an M3A1; an Italeri PaK 40 75-mm finds itself inside an M3A1 to become a Yugoslav tank-killer. The last project, the most extensive use of resin after-market parts, is an M8 75-mm howitzer motor gun carriage. Step by step photos are shown throughout this little gem, although it would seem they were shot with insufficient maga-pixels for the sharpest color ever. Yes, there are plenty of hints, brand-name identification of after-market parts and, finally, a process color rendering of color chips for the paints used. If nothing else, Zaloga's modeling is splendid in color, and there's lots of that here.